Augustan Poetry
Often through hardship and nearly insurmountable difficulty great works of art are born. Although years of bloodshed and civil war had plagued Rome since the death of Julius Caesar, some of the most powerful and influential literature in the western world was developed in that timeframe. During the Age of Augustus (approximately 43 BC – 17 AD) such great writers as Virgil, Horace, Livy, Propertius, and Ovid created epic masterpieces of literature and philosophy. It was through the collective efforts of these great poets and writers as well as Augustus himself, that the rise of a new facet of Roman literature was possible. Seeing the opportunity to foster a great rebirth of Roman culture (specifically literature), Augustus and his closest advisor Maecenas created a situation advantageous for the great writers of the time to write (for the government) and profit from their skills. Augustus genuinely wanted lasting peace and a solid foundation for his new government, and so he essentially helped out the writers who in turn, indirectly helped him. The great literature was not pure propaganda for Augustus (although it was a little biased towards him) but from this revival of Roman identity through a revolution in literature, Augustus was able to ensure a great deal of peace, pride, prosperity, and power from his people and respect from the rest of the ancient world.
The great literary resurgence of the Augustan Age would not have been possible without the great writers of the time. Some of the most influential, persuasive, and powerful writing emerged out of Caesar’s murder, the civil wars, and the peace thereafter. Virgil was the first to begin the literary explosion as he claimed a classic Greek style of ...
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...d evolution of society in Rome, Ovid tore literature’s power, and his own success, to shreds.
Although it ultimately came to an end, the Augustan Age created some of the most influential, powerful, and beautiful works of western literature of all time. The environment created by Augustus and Maecenas, the unfathomable skills of the writers and their willingness to adventure, explore, and take risks, to benefit Roman culture led to (probably) the greatest collection of literature the western world has ever seen.
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In contrast, Ovid conceived a different purpose for his epic. He wrote fifteen books, compared to Virgil's twelve, with many of his stories originating from Greek and Roman myth, concerned with the transformations of shapes, from the creation of the world to Julius Caesar's death and deification. He focuses on entertaining the reader in a humorous fashion, and rather than establishing Rome's origins in history, he is more concerned with establishing his own fame, for the future ages. These different backgrounds of the two authors illustrate that they each had contrasting agendas for their books. Thus, the portrayal of the gods differs greatly-Virgil's are austere and purposeful, whereas, Ovid's are humorous, reflecting his neoteric style, and intentionally different from the Virgilian gods.
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Clearly, there is a distinction between the world of the Roman gods and the world that everyday people live in. Man, according to Ovid, has experienced a gold, sil...
Livy’s The Rise of Rome serves as the ultimate catalogue of Roman history, elaborating on the accomplishments of each king and set of consuls through the ages of its vast empire. In the first five books, Livy lays the groundwork for the history of Rome and sets forth a model for all of Rome to follow. For him, the “special and salutary benefit of the study of history is to behold evidence of every sort of behaviour set forth as on a splendid memorial; from it you may select for yourself and for your country what to emulate, from it what to avoid, whether basely begun or basely concluded.” (Livy 4). Livy, however, denies the general populace the right to make the same sort of conclusions that he made in constructing his histories. His biased representation of Romulus and Tarquin Superbus, two icons of Roman history, give the readers a definite model of what a Roman should be, instead of allowing them to come to their own conclusion.
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In Titus Livius’, The Early History of Rome, Livy takes on the task of documenting Rome’s early history and some of the famous individuals who help contribute to the ‘greatness’ of Rome. Livy dedicates an entire portion of his writing to describe the reigns of the first seven kings of Rome; all who influence the formation and governance of Rome in some way. However, of the seven kings in early Roman history, King Romulus and King Numa Pompilius achieved godlike worship and high esteem from their fellow Romans. While both highly important and respected figures in Rome’s history, the personalities and achievements of King Romulus and King Numa Pompilius are complete opposites of one another. Despite the differences found in each king and of their rule over Rome, both Romulus and Numa Pompilius have a tremendous influence in the prosperity and expansion of Rome in its early days.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an anti-epic that was written in an attempt to poke fun at the seriousness of Virgil’s Aeneid. Although the Aeneid and Metamorphoses differ vastly from one another, both of these two revolutionary Roman works provide contemporary readers with insight into Rome’s treatment of women during the age of Augustus. However, Ovid’s Metamorphoses portrays women in a much more positive light than Virgil does in the Aeneid, and this informs readers that Ovid, not Virgil, was at least somewhat concerned with the oppression of women in ancient Roman society.
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Augustus Caesar’s had a huge impact on Western Civilization. He molded Rome into being a peaceful place. He changed Rome. He made it bigger and more glorious. He created things that we still use today like currency and the postal service. He was good to the people of Rome, and because of his kindness he was worshiped by most of the Roman’s and after his death considered a
Critical thinking requires systematic disciplined use of universal intellectual standards (Paul and Elder, 2012). In nursing, the nursing process is a set of organized steps that aid a nurse in thinking critically and focus on how to solve problems related to the patient. The scholarly foundation of nursing practice was not expressed until the 1960s, when nursing teachers and pioneers started to distinguish and name the segments of nursing 's scholarly procedures. This denoted the start of the nursing process.
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What is nursing? Florence Nightingale, first nursing theorist, defined nursing as having “charge of the personal health of somebody … and what nursing has to do … is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him” (Nightingale, 1946, p.6). The philosophy of nursing since then has been restated and refined; however the essence of what nursing is has stayed the same. The 2003 edition of ANA’s Nursing’s Social Policy is the most current definition of nursing that reflects the evolution of professional nursing. It defines nursing as:
The standards of practice describe a competent level of nursing care as exhibited by the critical thinking model known as the nursing process. This practice includes the areas of assessment, diagnosis, outcome identification, planning, implementation, and evaluation. The nursing process includes significant actions taken by registered nurses (RN) and forms the foundation of the nurse’s decision-making (“American Nurses Association,” 2010).
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