Two Centuries of Roman Prose (selections)

The prescribed prose selection brings together three masters of Roman prose across roughly two centuries. Each extract is a self-contained set text with its own author, style and theme.

Sallust, 'Caesar and Cato Compared' (Bellum Catilinae 53.6-54). The historian pauses his narrative of the Catilinarian conspiracy to draw a famous double portrait of the two greatest men of his age, Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger. In tight, antithetical sentences he contrasts Caesar's generosity, energy and ambition with Cato's austere integrity, ending with the celebrated judgement that Cato preferred 'to be good rather than to seem so' ('esse quam videri bonus malebat').

Pliny, 'Convalescence of a Sick Slave' (Epistulae 5.19). A warm personal letter in which Pliny describes his humane treatment of his freedman Zosimus, a gifted reader and comic actor who has fallen ill, coughing blood. Pliny asks his friend Valerius Paulinus to let Zosimus recuperate at his estate near Forum Iulii, where the air is healthy. The letter is a portrait of humanitas (kindliness) between master and servant.

Tacitus, 'A Murder Ship Miscarries' (Annals XIV.3-5). The dark, dramatic narrative of Nero's first attempt to murder his mother Agrippina by means of a collapsible ship designed by the freedman Anicetus. Nero lures Agrippina to Baiae, dines with her affectionately, and sends her off by sea; the trap is sprung, but the plot miscarries: a companion is crushed, another killed when she pretends to be Agrippina, while Agrippina herself swims to safety. Tacitus' brilliant, compressed style makes a masterpiece of suspense and irony.