Background for The Age of Augustus                            Jim O'Hara

                Historical and literary timeline (cf. also here and here and here and here )

Greek Literary Backgound:
VIII-VII?     Homer and Hesiod; VII- V Greek Lyric
V       Greek Drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) and Historiography (Herodotus, Thucydides)
III     Theocritus, Callimachus and the other Alexandrians, Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica
III BCE?- IV CE?, esp. II C.E. Greek Novel

VIII Legendary founding of Rome
end of VI Shift from monarchy to Republic

201, 146 Ends of Second, Third Punic Wars (with Carthage and Hannibal);
Rome gradually acquires control of Sicily, Greece, Spain, Africa

Roman Comedy: Plautus (d. 184), Terence (d. 159)
133-21 Reforming Gracchi brothers killed; start of 100-year "death" of Republic
111-100 Jugurthine War; Marius
90-81 War with Italians; Sulla consul, later bloody dictator
63 Cicero consul; conspiracy of Catiline
60 "First Triumvirate" of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar
Catullus (d. ?54), polymetric poems, epigrams, longer poems
Lucretius (d. ?55), On the Nature of the Universe
Oratory; writings of Cicero (d. 43), Caesar (d. 44), Varro (d. old in 27)
49-46, 44 War between Caesar and the Senate (Pompey); Assassination of Caesar
44-31 Octavian & Antony struggle for power; battle of Actium in 31,
27 BCE-14 CE Augustus
Sallust (d. ?34), Catiline, Jugurtha, etc.
Vergil (70-19), Eclogues (?38 or ?35); Georgics (?30, ?27), Aeneid (19)
Horace (65-8), Satires, Epodes, Odes etc.;
Livy (d. 17 C.E.) history From the Founding of Rome
Love Elegy: Gallus (40s?), Propertius and Tibullus (20s), Ovid
Ovid (43 BCE.-18 CE): Elegy, Metamorphoses, etc.
14- 68 CE: other Julio-Claudians: Tiberius (-37), Caligula ( -41), Claudius ( -54), and Nero

            Under Nero (mostly): Petronius, Satyricon, Lucan, Bellum Civile, Seneca (tragedy, philosophy); Persius (satire)

68-69 Year of Four Emperors
69-96 Rule of Flavians: Vespasian (69-79), Titus ( -81), and the hated Domitian

Flavian epic (Statius, Thebaid, Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, Silius Italicus, Punica); Martial (d. ?104) Epigrams
96-138 Rules of Nerva ( -98), Trajan ( -117), Hadrian
Tacitus (d. ?116), Dialogus, Annals etc.; Juvenal (d. ?128), Satires

Quintilian (d. ?100), Institutes of Oratory; Suetonius (d. ?135), Lives; Pliny the Younger (d. ?114), Letters

138-80 Rule of Antonines: Antoninus Pius ( -161), Marcus Aurelius
Apuleius (d. ?170), The Golden Ass
212 All in empire citizens by edict
306-37 Constantine; boost to Christianization
late IV, early V: poems of Prudentius, writings of Augustine