The Augustan Space : The Poetics of Geography, Topography and Monumentality

Explores the representation of space and monuments in the poetry of Augustan Rome. Comprising thirteen essays by leading scholars of Roman poetry, together with a substantial Introduction, it will be of interest to scholars and students of ancient literature and cultural history.

Augustus famously boasted that, having inherited a city of brick, he bequeathed a city of marble; but the transformation of the City''s physical fabric is only one aspect of a pervasive concern with geography, topography and monumentality that dominates Augustan culture and – in particular – Augustan poetry and poetics. Contributors to the present volume bring a range of approaches to bear on the works of Horace, Virgil, Propertius and Ovid, and explore their construction and representation of Greek, Roman and imperial space; centre and periphery; relations between written monuments and the physical City; movement within, beyond and away from Rome; gendered and heterotopic spaces; and Rome itself, as caput mundi, as cosmopolis and as ''heavenly city''. The introduction considers the wider cultural importance of space and monumentality in first-century Rome, and situates the volume''s key themes within the context of the spatial turn in Classical Studies.