The Literature of Rome

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American writer, poet, literary critic and essayist, recognized as one of the greatest writers of horror literature together with Edgar Allan Poe and considered by many to be one of the precursors of Anglo-American science fiction. His works, a contamination between horror, soft science fiction, dark fantasy and low fantasy, have often been described, even by himself, with the term weird fiction (where weird stands for “strange”), being recognized among the main origins of the modern literary genre of the new weird.
Published in November 1918 in The United Amateur, official organ of the United Amateur Press Association, the brief essay The Literature of Rome offers a compelling glimpse into the scholarly mind of a young Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Long before he became the master of “cosmic horror”, Lovecraft was a devoted neoclassicist, and this text serves as a concise, passionate chronological survey of Latin letters, from their rough beginnings to their golden age.
In this essay, Lovecraft argues that the Roman literary tradition is not merely a shadow of the Greek one, but a vital pillar of Western civilization. He traces the evolution of the Roman voice, emphasizing how the language transitioned from the “rude and unpolished” verses of the early Republic to the sublime sophistication of the Augustan Age.