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PAU Latin II (Madrid) study materials
PAU Latin II (Madrid) study resources

PAU Latin II (Madrid): Latin literature: authors, genres, works and periods

PAU Latin II (Madrid) · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Latin literature: authors, genres, works and periods

The literature question asks you to place the translated text, or a named author and work, in its genre and period, and to supply identification details: works, dates, characteristics, models. It is a short written recall question, and precision - a title, a century, a genre label - earns the marks.

Skeleton of periods

  • Arcaica (III–II BC): Plautus and Terence (comedy), Ennius (epic), Cato (prose), Lucilius (satire).
  • Tardorrepublicana / ciceroniana (I BC): Cicero, Caesar, Sallust, Lucretius, Catullus.
  • Augustea: Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Livy, Propertius, Tibullus.
  • Altoimperial («plata»): Seneca, Lucan, Persius, Petronius, the elder Pliny, Quintilian, Martial, Juvenal, Tacitus, Statius.
  • Bajoimperio y Antigüedad tardía: Suetonius, Apuleius, Ammianus, Ausonius, Prudentius, Augustine, Boethius.

Genre → authors → works

  • Épica: Virgil, Aeneid (12 books), Georgics, Eclogues; Lucan, Pharsalia; Statius, Thebaid.
  • Elegía: Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid (Amores, Heroides, Ars amatoria).
  • Lírica: Horace, Odes (4 books), Epodes, Carmen saeculare.
  • Sátira: Horace (Sermones), Persius, Juvenal; Menippean satire in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis.
  • Epigrama: Martial. Fábula: Phaedrus.
  • Historia: Caesar, Commentarii (Gallic War 7 books, Civil War 3); Sallust (Catiline, Jugurthine War, Histories); Livy, Ab urbe condita (142 books, 35 surviving); Tacitus (Annals, Histories, Agricola, Germania); Suetonius, Lives.
  • Oratoria: Cicero (Catilinarians, Verrines, De oratore).
  • Filosofía y didáctica: Lucretius, De rerum natura; Seneca, Epistulae morales, dialogues, tragedies; Cicero, De officiis.
  • Novela: Petronius, Satyricon; Apuleius, Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass).

Worked example

Question: which Augustan work in hexameters collects stories of mythological transformations? Reasoning: hexameters plus transformation narrative points to Ovid's Metamorphoses, 15 books, Augustan, epic-didactic in tone. Distinguish it explicitly from Apuleius' Metamorphoses, a prose novel about a man turned into a donkey, written in the 2nd century AD.

Traps that cost marks

  • Confusing the two Metamorphoses, Ovid's and Apuleius'.
  • Merging Seneca the philosopher-tragedian with his father, the rhetorician.
  • Inventing book numbers, titles or dating a work to the wrong century.
  • Treating Horace's and Juvenal's satires as the same register: Horatian irony versus Juvenalian indignation.