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Grattius

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Grattius was a Roman poet of the age of Augustus (63 BC – 14 AD). He was the author of a Cynegeticon, a poem on hunting, of which 541 hexameter lines remain, preserved in a manuscript of c. 800 AD.[1] He describes various kinds of game, methods of hunting, and the best breeds of horses and dogs, using a fairly regular hexameter to do so.[2]

Life

Grattius may have been a native of Falerii[3] but this assertion rests on the doubtful authority of a single lost manuscript, employed in an early printing. The only reference to him in any extant ancient writer is a passing reference in Ovid, Ex Ponto.[4]

Purpose

Grattius stresses the role of ratio (reason) in hunting, seeing it as a civilising endeavour in the tradition of Hercules, as opposed to indulgence in luxuria.[5]

See also

3

Notes

  1. ^ H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Latin Literature (1966) p. 339
  2. ^ H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Latin Literature (1966) p. 340
  3. ^ E.g. in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911, s.v. "Grattius [Faliscus]".
  4. ^ Ovid, Ex Ponto, iv.16.33
  5. ^ P. Tooley, Melancholy, Love and Time (2004) p. 242-3
  • Cynegeticon, Latin text from J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff, Loeb Classical Library Minor Latin Poets, vol. I; and English translation at LacusCurtius.

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