Rome's Patron

The Lives and Afterlives of Maecenas

Emily Gowers

$79.99

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Princeton University Pres
05 June 2024

The story of Maecenas and his role in the evolution and continuing legacy of ancient Roman poetry and culture

An unelected statesman with exceptional powers, a patron of the arts and a luxury-loving friend of the emperor Augustus: Maecenas was one of the most prominent and distinctive personalities of ancient Rome. Yet the traces he left behind are unreliable and tantalizingly scarce. Rather than attempting a conventional biography, Emily Gowers shows in Rome's Patron that it is possible to tell a different story, one about Maecenas's influence, his changing identities and the many narratives attached to him across two millennia.

Rome's Patron explores Maecenas's appearances in the central works of Augustan poetry written in his name-Virgil's Georgics, Horace's Odes and Propertius's elegies-and in later works of Latin literature that reassess his influence. For the Roman poets he supported, Maecenas was a mascot of cultural flexibility and innovation, a pioneer of gender fluidity and a bearer of imperial demands who could be exposed as a secret sympathizer with their own values. For those excluded from his circle, he represented either favouritism and indulgence or the lost ideal of a patron in perfect collaboration with the authors he championed.

As Gowers shows, Maecenas had and continues to have a unique cachet-in the fantasies that still surround the gardens, buildings and objects so tenuously associated with him; in literature, from Ariosto and Ben Johnson to Phillis Wheatley and W. B. Yeats; and in philanthropy, where his name has been surprisingly adaptable to more democratic forms of patronage.

By: Emily Gowers
Imprint: Princeton University Pres
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780691193144
ISBN 10: 0691193142
Pages: 488
Publication Date: 05 June 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Emily Gowers is professor of Latin literature and a fellow of St John’s College at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature and the editor of Horace: Satires Book I.

Reviews for Rome's Patron: The Lives and Afterlives of Maecenas

"""This [is] an exceptional book, the product of vast reading combined with high scholarship—and . . . readability. It would be an impertinence for the reviewer (whose knowledge of Maecenas has been immeasurably widened by Emily Gowers) merely to recommend it: it deserves to be bought widely throughout the respublica litterarum.""---Colin Leach, Classics for All"