Augusto Rostagni

"Just as the Greeks in their beginnings benefited from multiple relations with the culture of earlier civilizations, which flourished in the eastern Mediterranean basin, from which both directly and indirectly they drew elements of all kinds [...] so the The Romans, coming later, were able to carry out a further phase of history, namely, not to submit, but to succeed the Greeks, bringing before them in their turn that flood of universal culture that moved from the East to the West. They were not wrong, but indisputable in merit of accepting Hellenism of assimilating it, while reacting – as no other ancient people knew how to do – by means of their own virtues and aptitudes, so as to insert a new flowering on the old trunk. (p. 8)"

"His imagination possesses a force that does not stop at the surface, but pursues things in the depths of their essence. Thus he achieves the effect of making alive and concrete everything he touches and describes, even if they are arduous and abstract concepts. These come out as if by magic from the nebula of abstraction: or that they are dressed (as is usually the case) in metaphorical images; or that flaunt their new and almost primordial nakedness. Lucretius is in fact a great creator of expressions. That is why he has succeeded in the poetry of science, in which so many others have failed. of all times and of all literature. (p. 127)"

"No Greek had the power of Cicero: because no Greek could impress on the abstract concepts of philosophy the impulse of action; No Greek could warm with the warmth of life the highest ideal of Hellenistic culture, that of humanitas (which was especially taught by the Hellenistic philosophers, Panaetius, Posidonius, etc.) and to transform it, as Cicero transformed it in Roman terms, into a principle operating on all peoples. A master of humanitas for his people, he became a teacher of the entire Western world, working through Christianity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, uninterruptedly. (p. 138)"

"In short, Virgil performed the miracle of making heroic poetry flourish from the bosom of a mature conscience, nourished by historical experience and philosophy. The difference from the Homeric model could not be more profound. Homer aimed, more than anything else, at the representation of external facts, while illuminating them with a high pathetic sense of humanity; Virgil, on the other hand, turns his attention to the psychological motives to the spiritual travails, to the mysterious, eternal laws that govern the facts and the becoming of history. Therefore we find in the [[Aeneid our poet, in his most personal and evocative aspects; We find him tormented by the sense of pain, anxious for peace, for revelation. (p. 166)"

"Augusto Rostagni, Lineamenti di storia della letteratura latina, revised and expanded edition by Luciano Perelli, Edizioni Scolastiche Mondadori, C.E.196736."