Beyond Comparison? Literary 
Appropriation and Its Effects on 
(Post-)Augustan Greco-Roman Text 
Production
Markus Hafner
Institut für Antike an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Universitätsplatz 3/II, 8010 Graz, Austria
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3578-5517
markus.hafner@uni-graz.at
This article centers, first, on the Roman reception of earlier Greek literature, which 
is considered less a simple “receiving” of foreign influence and rather an active 
“taking” and act of appropriation, and, second, on the effects that this process 
had on Imperial Greek Literature. Thus, it deals with the question whether Greek 
literature—at least in part—during the Imperial Period can be considered an 
autonomous, cosmopolitan, and many-centered phenomenon in its own right and 
impetus, with its independent production centers that constructed and defined 
their particular identity. Or, alternatively, whether in the Imperial Age up to the 
second century CE we encounter a dominating perspective in literary texts, which 
contributed to strengthen and redefine the Roman viewpoint and the center’s 
identity from the periphery. The Greek texts which are discussed in this essay invite 
the interpretation that the Post-Augustan Age, despite its locally diverse and multi-
ethnical setup, monopolized a perspective, which encouraged the Greek elite to join 
the Imperial project, thus resulting in a Greco-Roman literature that appears to be 
beyond comparison.
Keywords: ancient Greek literature / Roman empire / Post-Augustan age / reception / 
identity / literary appropriation 
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“The colonized colonizer”: Horace’s paradoxical statement
The last work of the Roman poet Horace contains a controversial and 
paradoxical statement. In the second book of his Epistles (published 
11/10 BCE), Horace famously summarizes what Rome owes to the 
Greeks in terms of literary achievements. In Epistles 2.1.156–157, he 
concludes that
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Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis / intulit agresti Latio…
Conquered Greece took prisoner her rough conqueror and / introduced the 
arts to rustic Latium… (trans. Davie)
Horace’s verses (cf. Barchiesi, “Roman Perspectives” 103–105) call our 
attention to the strange fact that the Roman military conquest of the 
Greek world that took place especially in the third and the second cen-
tury BCE did not lead to a subsequent Romanization of Greek culture—
quite the reverse! Contrary to post-colonial assumptions (summarized 
in Hose, “Post-Colonial Theory” 304–310), which are paradigmatically 
expressed by William Blake, according to whom “It is not Arts that fol-
low & attend upon Empire, but Empire that attends upon & follows 
The Arts” (quoted by Said 13), in Horace’s words the Roman conquer-
ors’ cultural landscape became step-by-step Hellenized ever since their 
first contact with Greek education and learning (παιδεία). Friedrich Leo 
thus described the beginnings of Latin Literature as a transfer of cul-
ture from the East: “Die Kulturbewegung ist von Osten nach Westen 
gegangen” (Leo 1). Arts and empire, in other words, went in opposite 
directions. Horace’s statement about Rome’s Hellenization evokes the 
beginnings of Latin literature, founded by half-Greek epic poets such 
as Livius Andronicus or Ennius, or Cato’s (or Naevius’) struggle to cre-
ate a ‘Roman identity’ through literature. It should be born in mind in 
this context that already in the fourth and third century BCE Greek 
historiographers had expanded a Graecocentric view on Rome, the ris-
ing power in the west, thus rendering the city-state a part of the Greek 
world. A late reflex of this incorporation of Rome appears at the end 
of the first century BCE, when Dionysius from Halicarnassus in his 
History of Archaic Rome demonstrates that the Romans were originally 
Greeks, whose city was founded by Arcadian colonists (on which see 
Gabba). The Republican authors’ search for a ‘Roman identity’ thus ap-
pears as a striving for cultural emancipation from the dominating Greek 
viewpoint. When the perspective changed in later times, the (culturally) 
colonized people became the new rulers over the former (Rawson 3–18).
The Muse learns to write … Latin
The Greek art (‘without empire’), which had invaded Rome in the 
third century, did not lead to Greek dominion over Roman culture. 
Rather, the beginnings of Roman literature can be considered as an ac-
tive seizing of Greek culture, i.e. a “translation project,” which seemed 
Markus Hafner:     Beyond Comparison? 
23
unique in the entire Mediterranean world: “[I]t was by no means nor-
mal in the ancient world for conquerors to learn the language of their 
subjects” (Feeney 30). This literary appropriation was only one aspect 
of a much broader and longer absorption process of different cultures, 
which concerned borrowings of material, religious, and linguistic 
elements. After centuries of competition with other non-Greek, and 
mostly Italic, ethnicities and peoples such as Etruscans and Samnites, 
Carthaginians, Celts, Oscans, and Messapi, which led to Rome’s hege-
mony in Italy, the Romans became dominators of the Mediterranean 
World and appropriated Greek culture step by step (Barchiesi, “Roman 
Perspectives” 108–109). This process culminated in the first century 
BCE, when Roman writers had almost completely usurped the literary 
discourse. According to their views and statements, Ennius (dubbed 
the “second Homer” [alter Homerus] by Horace, Epist. 2.1.50) and 
later Virgil had successfully surpassed Homer, and Cicero ‘naturalized’ 
Greek philosophy in Rome (Harder 330–353). This spirit of cultural 
imperialism pervades especially Cicero’s late philosophical writings. In 
an unambiguous passage (Tusculan Disputations 2.5), he calls upon his 
fellow Romans to attend to the field of Greek philosophy and learning 
and to appropriate it in order to enrich Latin literature:
hortor omnis, qui tacere id possunt, ut huius quoque generis laudem iam languenti 
Graeciae eripiant et transferant in hanc urbem, sicut reliquas omnis, quae quidem 
erant expetendae, studio atque industria sua maiores nostri transtulerunt.
Accordingly, I encourage all who are able to do this to grasp distinction in 
this field also from the now failing hand of Greece and to transfer it to this 
city, just as our forefathers by their energy and application transferred here all 
the remaining forms of distinction, at least those that were desirable. (trans. 
Davie)
As a consequence of such an omnivorous cultural integration process, 
Roman authors, of both poetry and prose, throughout the first cen-
tury BCE and the first century CE blended native with alien elements 
(Walde 26–36), thus creating a heterogeneous material through liter-
ary ‘Romanization.’ Accordingly, Horace’s probably ironic statement 
about Rome being captivated by Greek art, i.e. Rome as the “colonized 
colonizer” (victor captus), has to be contrasted with the poetic self-def-
inition of the same author some years earlier, in the sealing poem of 
his three-book collection of Odes (24/23 BCE). In the programmatic 
Ode 3.30, Horace tells his readers that he has surpassed the Greek lyric 
poets and has become the classic poet of Augustan Rome, considering 
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himself the most eminent importer of Archaic Greek poetry into Latin 
Literature (3.30.12b–14a):
[…] ex humili potens /
princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos /
deduxisse modos. […]
[…] From humble beginnings
I was able to be the first (princeps) to bring Aeolian song
to Italian measures. (trans. West)
In this passage, Horace boasts about having been the first, and finest, 
poet (princeps) to transfer the Aeolic lyric of Sappho and Alcaeus to 
Rome, that is, to offer the best lyric in Sapphic or Alcaic stanzas and 
meters written in Latin so far. This, as I see it, explicit commentary 
about Horace’s own literary appropriation of the Archaic Greek poetic 
tradition has a deep political connotation, since the word princeps in 
verse 13 draws a parallel to the emperor Augustus himself. By calling 
himself a princeps, Horace sets his poetic project in a close relationship 
with Augustus’ cultural enterprise to reinvent all aspects of Roman tra-
dition during his principate. Augustus also motivated Roman authors 
to carry out a renovation of Latin Literature and to proclaim a new 
classical Golden Age of Roman arts, which clearly built on the absorp-
tion and the integrative use of Greek, particularly Archaic, models (see 
Connolly 21–42; Mundt). By paralleling his own poetic practice with 
Augustus’ imperial mission, Horace gives a precise statement of Rome’s 
ways of appropriating Greek culture. Thus, whereas Horace’s paradoxi-
cal statement concerning the Hellenization of Roman culture (Epist. 
2.1.156–157) seems to presuppose a rather passive Roman attitude to-
wards the impact of Greek learning, the programmatic passage from 
his Odes clearly expresses the active taking and overtaking (deduxisse) 
of literary tradition (on Roman authors’ ‘appropriating’ mechanisms 
towards predecessors, Greek or Roman, see Hinds; Barchiesi, “Roman 
Perspectives” 102). In Ode 3.30, in other words, Horace declares his 
poetic ‘principality.’
Markus Hafner:     Beyond Comparison? 
25
Systematizing literary appropriation in the Post-Augustan Age
The subsequent success of this literary appropriation—at least from 
the internal Roman perspective—becomes evident in a prominent first 
century CE text, the literary history, which Quintilianus offers in the 
tenth book of his monumental Education of the Orator. In his treatise, 
Quintilianus establishes a comparative history of Greek and Roman 
authors, whom he combines according to the literary genre, beginning 
from epic and moving on to other poetic forms (10.1.85, 93, and 105):
Idem nobis per Romanos quoque auctores ordo ducendus est. Itaque ut apud illos 
Homerus, sic apud nos Vergilius auspicatissimum dederit exordium, omnium eius 
generis poetarum Graecorum nostrorumque haud dubie proximus. […] Elegia 
quoque Graecos provocamus […] Satura quidem tota nostra est […]. Oratores 
vero vel praecipue Latinam eloquentiam parem facere Graecae possunt: nam Cice-
ronem cuicumque eorum fortiter opposuerim.
I now come to Roman authors, and shall follow the same order in dealing 
with them. As among Greek authors Homer provided us with the most aus-
picious opening, so will Virgil among our own. For of all epic poets, Greek 
and Roman, he, without doubt, most nearly approaches Homer. […] We also 
challenge the supremacy of the Greeks in elegy. […] Satire, on the other hand, 
is all our own. […]. But it is our orators, above all, who enable us to match our 
Roman eloquence against that of Greece. For I would set Cicero against any 
one of their orators without fear of refutation. (trans. Butler)
According to the professor of Latin oratory Quintilianus, Virgil came 
very close to Homer, and Latin elegy can easily compete with the 
Greeks, whereas satire is clearly a Roman invention. Lastly, Cicero—
who is Quintilianus’ favorite in terms of style and eloquence—holds 
the position of Rome’s magisterial orator and surpasses the best 
Greeks, even Demosthenes (Ciceronem cuicumque eorum fortiter oppo-
suerim). This syncritical method (De Jonge 300–323), which became 
very popular in Imperial Times and which is, for example, the order-
ing principle in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (Erbse 398–424), shows that 
Quintilianus starts from a clear-cut dichotomy of we (the Romans) 
versus they (the Greeks). The Romans thus received from the Greeks 
literary models to emulate and compete with, and except from ‘super-
human’ Homer, the Romans, according to this statement, put their 
Greek predecessors in the shade and outdid their literary refinement 
by appropriating genres, styles, and the art of eloquence. I would even 
suggest that the alleged comparability, or rather opposition, of both 
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Greek and Roman authors in Quintilianus’ rewriting of literary his-
tory is already a forceful act of appropriation.
Recent scholarship in the field of Roman cultural history has 
thrown into relief the phenomenon of cultural appropriation, through 
which Rome—‘Empire of Plunder’ (Loar, Macdonald, and Padilla 
Peralta 1–11)—made and remade itself over and over again, in Italy 
and abroad. It could be shown how such cultural plunder ranged 
from literary theft to grand-scale spoliation of monuments such as 
Egyptian obelisks (on the not exclusively Roman phenomenon of 
‘cultural borrowings’ throughout antiquity, see Gruen). However, the 
effect, which Roman appropriation had on the production of Greek 
Imperial Literature, and the Greek reaction itself, remain relatively 
understudied. This leads me to the question whether Imperial Greek 
Literature in Post-Augustan Times retained its earlier autonomy and 
impetus due to the impact of Rome’s literary appropriation. Scholars 
have stressed that during the movement of the Second Sophistic (on 
which see Richter and Johnson 3–9), ‘Greekness’ and Greek heritage 
were greater than at any other time, and that Greek identity came 
before any loyalty to Rome (Swain 17–131). The Imperial Age was, 
without doubt, pervaded with an ongoing debate on questions of cul-
tural identity (Goldhill 1–25). Accordingly, experts have argued that 
the Greek elites’ many-centered cultural activities during the High 
Roman Empire (first to third century CE) were based upon the logic to 
uphold the workings and values of an aristocratic power establishment, 
in which the exhibition of literary (and, particularly, rhetoric) culture 
did ‘symbolically’ reproduce and thus justify the power structure itself 
(Schmitz 26–31). Others have regarded the production of literature 
itself as a primary means of asserting the authors’ Hellenic identity and 
of actively constructing their own position vis-a-vis the classical Greek 
past: “The Hellenism of Greek literature is neither natural nor self-evi-
dent – it is rather artfully created.” (Whitmarsh, Greek Literature 22; cf. 
29–38). The attributes ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ are thus more and more 
considered fluid and merging categories, and identity less a static attri-
bution and rather a laborious construction and result of negotiation. 
However, the allegedly stark contrast, or dichotomy, between Roman 
power and Hellenic culture and identity in the Eastern Mediterranean, 
which has motivated comparative approaches on Greek versus Latin 
Imperial Literature (e.g. Dihle 13–34, 62–74), still informs scholarly 
views. Many Imperial Greek texts, however, invite an alternative inter-
pretation, fostering a strong impression that there came into existence 
a relatively coherent bilingual ‘Greco-Roman’ literature, which was 
Markus Hafner:     Beyond Comparison? 
27
strongly directed towards the empire’s center: i.e. a literature beyond 
comparison. Its texts reproduced and redefined Rome’s identity from 
their own peripheral perspective. I shall present and discuss some of the 
most relevant passages in the sections that follow.
Redefining Rome? Literary production in the Greek 
periphery
In the preface to his essay On the Ancient Orators (first century BCE), 
the Greek teacher of rhetoric, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who came to 
Augustan Rome in order to teach members of the Roman upper class, 
praises the influence that the capital exerts on contemporary literary 
production, Greek and Latin (pref. 1.2; 3.1):
ἀρξαμένη μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Μακεδόνος τελευτῆς ἐκπνεῖν καὶ 
μαραίνεσθαι κατ’ ὀλίγον, ἐπὶ δὲ τῆς καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἡλικίας μικροῦ δεήσασα 
εἰς τέλος ἠφανίσθαι […]. αἰτία δ’ οἶμαι καὶ ἀρχὴ τῆς τοσαύτης μεταβολῆς 
ἐγένετο ἡ πάντων κρατοῦσα Ῥώμη πρὸς ἑαυτὴν ἀναγκάζουσα τὰς ὅλας πόλεις 
ἀποβλέπειν […]. τοιγάρτοι πολλαὶ μὲν ἱστορίαι σπουδῆς ἄξιαι γράφονται τοῖς 
νῦν, πολλοὶ δὲ λόγοι πολιτικοὶ χαρίεντες ἐκφέρονται φιλόσοφοί τε συντάξεις οὐ 
μὰ Δία εὐκαταφρόνητοι ἄλλαι τε πολλαὶ καὶ καλαὶ πραγματεῖαι καὶ Ῥωμαίοις 
καὶ Ἕλλησιν εὖ μάλα διεσπουδασμέναι προεληλύθασί τε καὶ προελεύσονται 
κατὰ τὸ εἰκός.
From the death of Alexander […] [the rhetoric] began to lose its spirit and 
gradually wither away, and in our generation had reached a state of almost 
total extinction. [In the following section, Dionysius gives reasons for his view that 
his own age has shown forth the opposite situation]. I think that the cause and 
origin of this great revolution has been the conquest of the world by Rome, 
who has thus made every city focus its entire attention upon her. […] This 
state of affairs has led to the composition of many worthwhile works of his-
tory by contemporary writers, and the publication of many elegant political 
tracts and many by no means negligible philosophical treatises; and a host of 
other fine works, the products of well-directed industry, have proceeded from 
the pens of both Greeks and Romans, and will probably continue to do so. 
(trans. Usher)
In this passage, Dionysius links the flourishing of Greek and Latin 
texts to the renovating power of the Roman Empire, thus confirm-
ing to the contemporary Augustan ideology that Rome under his 
guidance saw a universal renewal of artistic practices (Wiater 60–119). 
According to this Classicist Three-Period model, a bloom of rheto-
ric in Classical Athens (fifth and fourth century BCE) led to literary 
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(and moral) decadence during the Hellenistic Age after Alexander’s 
death (i.e. from 323 BCE onward). Finally, classicistic tendencies 
under Roman dominance helped to reestablish rhetoric and literary 
production in general (Hidber 14–81). Dionysius thus draws paral-
lels between the flourishing Greek empire under Alexander the Great 
and Augustus’ principate of the day, the latter having initiated a new 
philosophical rhetoric (Wiater 99). As a consequence, it is plausible 
that the phenomenon of Atticism (Kim 41–53), i.e. the far-reaching 
establishment of a classicizing style in Imperial Greek literature that 
was oriented towards fifth and fourth century BCE Athens, developed 
principally in Rome itself (Hose, “Die zweite Begegnung” 274–288). 
It was the empire’s center where Greek experts and teachers such as 
Dionysius put together a literary canon to be studied and henceforth 
to be emulated by their elite Roman disciples. Thus, Dionysius, in 
his didactic treatise On the Ancient Orators, which addresses students 
of Greek literature and culture, compares the stylistic particularities 
of different orators from classical Athens and judges what is worth 
of imitation (μίμησις), and what is not. Dionysius, who lived and 
worked in Rome, designed the city as a center of gravity and a liter-
ary hotspot which had become responsible for the flourishing and the 
expansion of (not only Latin, but also) Greek literature and its canon 
formation during the Augustan period.
Rome as the New Athens?
In a similar vein, Aelius Aristides, a successful orator from Asia Minor, 
who visited Rome in the mid-second century CE, considered Rome – 
at least in a metaphorical way – as the true heir of Classical Athens. 
In his encomiastic speech on behalf of the city of Rome (Klein I 113–
172), the capital appears as the New Athens on a thematic, but also on 
a linguistic, level (Regarding Rome, 60–61):
καὶ οὔτε θάλαττα διείργει τὸ μὴ εἶναι πολίτην οὔτε πλῆθος τὰς ἐν μέσῳ χώρας, 
οὐδ’ Ἀσία καὶ Εὐρώπη διῄρηται ἐνταῦθα· πρόκειται δ’ ἐν μέσῳ πᾶσι πάντα· 
ξένος δ’ οὐδεὶς ὅστις ἀρχῆς ἢ πίστεως ἄξιος, ἀλλὰ καθέστηκε κοινὴ τῆς γῆς 
δημοκρατία ὑφ’ ἑνὶ τῷ ἀρίστῳ ἄρχοντι καὶ κοσμητῇ, καὶ πάντες ὥσπερ εἰς 
κοινὴν ἀγορὰν συνίασι τευξόμενοι τῆς ἀξίας ἕκαστοι. ὅπερ δὲ πόλις τοῖς αὑτῆς 
ὁρίοις καὶ χώραις ἐστὶ, τοῦθ’ ἥδε ἡ πόλις τῆς ἁπάσης οἰκουμένης, ὥσπερ αὖ 
τῆς χώρας ἄστυ κοινὸν ἀποδεδειγμένη. φαίης ἂν περιοίκους ἅπαντας ἢ κατὰ 
δῆμον οἰκοῦντας ἄλλον χῶρον εἰς μίαν ταύτην ἀκρόπολιν συνέρχεσθαι κτλ.
Markus Hafner:     Beyond Comparison? 
29
And neither does the sea nor a great expanse of intervening land keep one 
from being a citizen, nor here are Asia and Europe distinguished. But all lies 
open to all men. No one is a foreigner who deserves to hold office or to be 
trusted, but there has been established a common democracy of the world, 
under one man, the best ruler and director, and all men assemble here as it 
were at a common meeting place, each to obtain his due. What a city is to its 
boundaries and its territories, so this city is to the whole inhabited world, as if 
it had been designated its common town. You would say that all the perioeci 
or all the people settled in different places deme by deme assemble at this one 
acropolis… (trans. Behr)
By applying names and institutions, which were highly reminiscent 
of the Classical Greek City (πόλις), and most concretely of Classical 
Athens, and by applying keywords such as dēmokratía, agorá, dēmos or 
akrópolis to Rome itself, Aristides adopts a classicist language denoting 
an ideal city in generic and traditional terms. The description points to 
contemporary Imperial Rome, if not to the empire as a whole: “Rome 
est par conséquent devenue l’acropole de l’univers” (Di Franco 287). 
This procedure, on the one hand, makes the phenomenon of Rome 
accessible and comprehensible to the Greek elite audience. Particularly 
so, since the rhetorical description of the appraised city (ἔπαινος 
πόλεως) in Regarding Rome bases on ideological and political assump-
tions rather than on the exact topography of the Roman landscape 
(“the City itself is less the material Rome than an idea”, Sherwin-White 
259). On the other hand, the laus urbis Romae (ἐγκώμιον τῆς Ῥώμης), 
i.e. the praise of the city, mirrors exactly the Roman claim of legitimate 
succession of Athens (translatio imperii), as well as the appropriation of 
Greek terms for political and civic achievements. Calling Rome—quite 
paradoxically (on the semantic shift of the term, see Klein II 89–90)—
a democracy under one ruler (δημοκρατία ὑφ’ ἑνὶ τῷ ἀρίστῳ ἄρχοντι 
καὶ κοσμητῇ), Aristides clearly alludes to Thucydides’ judgement con-
cerning the allegedly democratic, yet actually monarchic rule during 
the fifty years of Periclean politics (Thuc. 2.65: ἐγίγνετό τε λόγῳ μὲν 
δημοκρατία, ἔργῳ δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου ἀνδρὸς ἀρχή). Aristeides’ praise, 
according to which the inhabited and civilized world (ἡ οἰκουμένη) 
and the urban center coincide (urbs et orbis), obviously addressed an 
educated elite of the Greek East and encouraged them to integrate 
into the new order that appeared as the true heir of Athens (Bleicken 
263). Nevertheless, the passage also refers to the global conceptions 
of Imperial politics and the Roman center’s absorption of Greek cul-
ture. In the center’s perspective, Athens as the capital of Atticism and 
Greek sophistry played an important role for Imperial Rome’s self-
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definition. One might think, for example, of the philhellenic emperor 
Hadrian, who donated the so-called Athenaeum in Rome, a perfor-
mance place for sophists, through which Athens, or at least a museum-
like version of it, had been attributed a central position for Roman 
self-definition (Hafner 249–253). That is, even at the core of the vast 
empire itself culture contacts were negotiated (Barchiesi, “Center and 
Periphery” 394–405). One might also think of the Hadrian’s Arch 
in Athens (dedicated on occasion of Hadrian’s Athenian citizenship 
and archontate in 111/112 CE), in whose inscription the emperor 
claimed to be ‘refounder’ of Athens and a second Theseus (IG II2 
5185). Through this arch, which was erected between the old City of 
Theseus and the new Roman city, the princeps protector placed himself 
in the tradition of the attic founding-hero. Thus, the ‘Hellenization’ 
of the power center and the ‘Romanization’ of the cultural hotspot of 
Greece went hand in hand (see Whitmarsh, “Thinking Local” 1–16). 
Through so-called interpretatio Romana, Rome integrated elements of 
foreign cultures, leading to a subsequent (and reciprocal) shifting of 
parameters, which on a local level affected Roman culture as well (see 
also Hingley). From the overall perspective and despite the increas-
ingly multi-ethnic setup of the empire and its center, the imagination 
of Rome taking the helm of culture from Greece had become part of a 
powerful imperialist ideology.
Rome as the structuring principle in history
Next in our row is the preface of Appianus’ Roman History from the 
middle of the second century CE. The work tries to give an explanation 
why Rome, whose war campaigns are centered at the core of Appianus’ 
historiographical project, had become the power it was (Hose, 
Erneuerung 142–355). In originally 24 books, Appianus gave an ac-
count of the peoples and territories from the earliest times down to their 
incorporation into the Imperium Romanum. The preface foreshadows 
this grand-scale historiographical undertaking (pref. 48–49; 58):
καὶ τόδε μοι κατὰ ἔθνος ἕκαστον ἐπράχθη, βουλομένῳ τὰ ἐς ἑκάστους 
ἔργα Ῥωμαίων καταμαθεῖν, ἵνα τὴν τῶν ἐθνῶν ἀσθένειαν ἢ φερεπονίαν καὶ 
τὴν τῶν ἑλόντων ἀρετὴν ἢ εὐτυχίαν ἢ εἴ τι ἄλλο συγκύρημα συνηνέχθη, 
καταμάθοιμι […]. τέτακται δ› αὐτῶν ἄλλη (sc. ἱστορία) μετ’ ἄλλην ὡς ἑκάστῳ 
πολέμῳ τὴν ἀρχὴν πρὸ ἑτέρου λαβεῖν συνέπεσεν, εἰ καὶ τὸ τέλος τῷ ἔθνει μετὰ 
πολλὰ ἕτερα γεγένηται.
Markus Hafner:     Beyond Comparison? 
31
I have made this research also in respect to teach of the other provinces, 
desiring to learn the Romans’ relations to each, in order to understand the 
weakness of these nations or their power of endurance, as well as the bravery 
or good fortune of their conquerors or any other circumstance contributing 
to the result […]. The order of these histories with respect to each other is 
according to the time when the Romans began to be embroiled in war with 
each nation, even though many other things intervened before that nation 
came to its end. (trans. White)
Similarly to the Latin author Florus, who wrote a universal history 
under Hadrian (Hose, Erneuerung 53–141), which culminated in 
Rome’s domination and the subdued ethnicities’ admiratio principis 
populi (pref. 3), the Alexandrian historiographer arranges his account 
geographically, by presenting, in a more balanced way than Florus, 
peoples and territories, the later provinces, in the chronological order, 
in which they were conquered by the Romans. This narrative tech-
nique based itself also on Herodotus, in whose Histories the expansive 
Persian Empire had been the main ordering principle. Thus, Appianus 
adapts and updates—apart from other models (Osgood 23–44)—his-
toriographical patterns developed by Herodotus in order to portray 
the Roman Empire as the structuring principle and the divinely le-
gitimated telos of his narrative project. At the same time, Appianus’ 
Roman History addresses members of the educated provincial elite from 
the Greek cultural sphere and encourages them to integrate them-
selves into the Roman monarchy, whose representatives had become 
more and more interested in modes of collaboration with local elites 
(Hose, Erneuerung 353–354). By this, the text oscillates and interfaces 
between center and periphery. For in Appianus’ time, the simultaneous 
strengthening of cultural-ethnic identities and the integrative identity 
of the Empire were, as Aristides in his Regarding Rome had already 
anticipated, no exclusive mechanisms any more. However, the almost 
“kaleidoscopic potential for identity formation realized and yet con-
duced a singular and peculiarly Roman social order” (Ando 20–21), 
since the Roman superstructure profited a lot from local entities, such 
as newly arranged provinces, under its guidance.
Risky undertones
A few literary voices from Imperial Greek Literature offer a rather pes-
simistic perspective on the Roman center’s monopolization and ap-
propriation of literature. In the following section, I shall focus on the 
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epilogue of [Longinus’] treatise On the Sublime (first century CE). The 
pseudonymous work (Geue 254–271), which is addressed to a Roman 
upper-class member called Terentianus, leads to a debate on recent de-
velopments in the field of rhetoric and literature. As to its complaints 
on the rhetoric of the day, the epilogue draws parallels with contem-
porary controversies in Latin Literature (Heldmann 287), such as in 
Tacitus (cf. Maternus’ second speech in the Dialogue on Oratory) or 
Petronius (Satyricon 1.3–2.8). The author, Pseudo-Longinus, quotes 
an anonymous philosopher who offers a counter-periodization and an 
opposite view on current literary history. Taking his magisterial model 
Homer as a starting point, the anonymous intellectual criticizes the 
stiff oratory of his time, i.e. the first century CE, which in his view 
underestimates genius and concentrates only on rhetorical school 
declamations. Instead of such low-level formalism, the critic focuses 
on the immediacy of poetic experience of greatness (Sublime 44.1–3):
Ἐκεῖνο μέντοι λοιπὸν ἕνεκα τῆς σῆς χρηστομαθείας οὐκ ὀκνήσομεν 
†ἐπιπροσθῆναι, διασαφῆσαι, Τερεντιανὲ φίλτατε, ὅπερ ἐζήτησέ τις τῶν 
φιλοσόφων πρὸς <ἔμ’> ἔναγχος, “θαῦμά μ’ ἔχει” λέγων “ὡς ἀμέλει καὶ ἑτέρους 
πολλούς, πῶς ποτε κατὰ τὸν ἡμέτερον αἰῶνα πιθαναὶ μὲν ἐπ› ἄκρον καὶ 
πολιτικαί, δριμεῖαί τε καὶ ἐντρεχεῖς καὶ μάλιστα πρὸς ἡδονὰς λόγων εὔφοροι, 
ὑψηλαὶ δὲ λίαν καὶ ὑπερμεγέθεις, πλὴν εἰ μή τι σπάνιον, οὐκέτι γίνονται φύσεις. 
τοσαύτη λόγων κοσμική τις ἐπέχει τὸν βίον ἀφορία. ἢ νὴ Δί’” ἔφη “πιστευτέον 
ἐκείνῳ τῷ θρυλουμένῳ, ὡς ἡ δημοκρατία τῶν μεγάλων ἀγαθὴ τιθηνός, ᾗ μόνῃ 
σχεδὸν καὶ συνήκμασαν οἱ περὶ λόγους δεινοὶ καὶ συναπέθανον; θρέψαι τε γάρ, 
φησίν, ἱκανὴ τὰ φρονήματα τῶν μεγαλοφρόνων ἡ ἐλευθερία καὶ ἐπελπίσαι, καὶ 
ἅμα διεγείρειν τὸ πρόθυμον τῆς πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔριδος καὶ τῆς περὶ τὰ πρωτεῖα 
φιλοτιμίας. [...] οἱ δὲ νῦν ἐοίκαμεν” ἔφη “παιδομαθεῖς εἶναι δουλείας δικαίας, 
τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἔθεσι καὶ ἐπιτηδεύμασιν ἐξ ἁπαλῶν ἔτι φρονημάτων μόνον οὐκ 
ἐνεσπαργανωμένοι [...].”
One problem now remains for solution, my dear Terentianus, and knowing 
your love of learning I will not hesitate to append it—a problem which a cer-
tain philosopher recently put to me. “It surprises me”, he said, “as it doubtless 
surprises many others too, how it is that in this age of ours we find natures that 
are supremely persuasive and suited for public life, shrewd and versatile and 
especially rich in literary charm, yet really sublime and transcendent natures 
are no longer, or only very rarely, now produced. Such is the universal dearth 
of literature that besets our times. Are we really to believe the hackneyed view 
that democracy is the kindly nurse of genius and that—speaking generally— 
the great men of letters flourished only with democracy and perished with it? 
Freedom, they say, has the power to foster noble minds and to fill them with 
high hopes, and at the same time to rouse our spirit of mutual rivalry and 
eager competition for the foremost place. […] But in these days we seem to be 
Markus Hafner:     Beyond Comparison? 
33
schooled from childhood in an equitable slavery, swaddled, I might say, from 
the tender infancy of our minds in the same servile ways and practices. […] 
(trans. Fyfe, rev. Russell)
Remarkably, the speaker here links the decline of literature with the 
change of the political system from Roman Republic to principate. In 
this, he particularly deplores the loss of freedom in the context of mon-
archy, which does not produce free thinkers anymore. By linking the 
decay of intellectual life with the shifting of Rome’s political constitu-
tion, the anonymous philosopher’s critique exhibits a senatorial per-
spective that is known, e.g., from Cicero’s works, in which eloquence 
appears as a “foster-child of a well-ordered state system”, i.e. of the for-
mer Roman Republic (Brut. 45 bene constitutae civitatis quasi alumna 
quaedam eloquentia). In On the Sublime, however, the critic is subse-
quently refuted by the authoritative voice of the likewise anonymous 
author (Sublime 44.6). [Longinus] responds to the former speaker that 
the intellectual decay is by no means a consequence of bad government, 
but rather due to morally corrupt individuals, thus clearly conforming 
to the (Post-)Augustan historiographical model.
Conclusion
The texts that I have discussed in the previous sections of this essay 
can be put in the context of (Post-)Augustan Rome’s project of literary 
renovation and redefinition. Moving from central to rather peripheral 
literary voices, I have inferred such an interpretation from Dionysius’ 
treatise On the Ancient Orators, from Aristides’ eulogy Regarding Rome, 
and from Appianus’ Roman History, which all reinforce in a more or 
less direct way a Roman identity, addressing diverse audiences, which 
were situated throughout, and even on the margins of, the Greek 
world. Even the complaint about the recently installed Imperial rhet-
oric in the epilogue of Pseudo-Longinus’ On the Sublime, which at 
first sight forms the exception of the rule, contributes to this identity, 
since the internal speaker’s fierce critique ends up being refuted by 
the author’s voice. The latter clearly conduces to a peculiarly Roman 
perspective. While many scholars have underscored the autonomous 
role of Greek Imperial literature as part of a cosmopolitan, connected, 
many-centered movement of cultural Hellenism in a broad sense, by 
which a Roman identity was only partly, or superficially, adopted, the 
texts presented here rather bear witness of Rome’s successful strategy 
of literary appropriation. This regime of ‘literary plunder,’ so to say, 
34
PKn, letnik 44, št. 2, Ljubljana, avgust 2021
which culminated during the omnivorous Augustan classicism and 
continued to exist during the subsequent centuries CE, had a much 
more lasting impact on the production of Greek texts than is often 
realized. Although further conclusions will have to rely on a broader 
textual base, although the Imperial Age saw a ‘kaleidoscopic potential 
for identity formation’ (Ando 20), and although things change abruptly 
in the third century CE, in the texts discussed here we encounter 
mostly one overarching perspective. Despite the texts’ complexity, it 
points to the strengthening and redefinition of the center and its iden-
tity from the periphery. All this makes me wonder whether we can still 
sharply contrast different and equally powerful ideological centers in 
Imperial Times and whether comparison ‘between literatures’ seems 
still an appropriate concept regarding an age of all-embracing literary 
appropriation…
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Markus Hafner:     Beyond Comparison? 
37
Onkraj primerjave? Učinki literarnega prisvajanja 
na poavgustovsko grško-rimsko besedilno 
produkcijo
Ključne besede: starogrška književnost / rimski imperij / poavgustovska doba / recepcija / 
identiteta / literarno prisvajanje
Članek se osredotoča najprej na rimsko recepcijo zgodnje grške literature, ki ni 
bila preprosto »sprejemanje« tujega vpliva, temveč prej aktivno »prevzemanje« 
in dejanje prisvajanja, nato še na učinke, ki jih je imel ta proces na imperialno 
grško književnost. V ospredju je vprašanje, ali imamo lahko grško literaturo v 
imperialnem obdobju vsaj do neke mere za avtonomen, svetovljanski in poli-
centričen pojav sam po sebi, z lastnim zagonom in neodvisnimi produkcij-
skimi centri, ki so oblikovali svojo lastno identiteto. Še drugače, ali naletimo v 
imperialni dobi (pa do drugega stoletja našega štetja) v literarnih besedilih na 
dominantno perspektivo, ki je prispevala h krepitvi in  redefiniciji perspektive 
rimskega imperija ter identitete središča z vidika periferije. V članku obravna-
vana grška besedila navajajo k razlagi, da je poavgustovska doba kljub lokalni 
raznolikosti in večetničnosti monopolizirala lastno perspektivo. To je spodbu-
dilo grško elito, da se pridruži imperialnemu projektu, in omogočilo nastanek 
grško-rimske literature, za katero se zdi, da je ni mogoče primerjati.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK  82.091 
[821.124+821.14].09
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v44.i2.02