Rome's conquest of Greece is completed in 27 BCE when the Roman Emperor Augustus annexes the rest of Greece and constitutes it as the senatorial province of Achaea.

Despite their military superiority, the Romans admire and become heavily influenced by the achievements of Greek culture, hence Horace's famous statement: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Greece, although captured, took its wild conqueror captive").

The epics of Homer inspire the Aeneid of Virgil, and authors such as Seneca the Younger write using Greek styles.

Roman heroes such as Scipio Africanus tended to study philosophy and regarded Greek culture and science as an example to be followed.

Similarly, most Roman emperors maintain an admiration for things Greek in nature.

The Roman Emperor Nero visits Greece in CE 66, and performs at the Ancient Olympic Games, despite the rules against non-Greek participation.

Hadrian is also particularly fond of the Greeks; before he becomes emperor, he serves as an eponymous archon of Athens.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (anglicized as Horace), the son of a former slave who had moved from Venusia in southern Italy to Rome to secure a better education for his son, had responded to Brutus’ speech to the Romans in Athens by enlisting, at twenty, in the republican army, in which he had fought as a staff officer (tribunus militum) under Brutus in the Battle of Philippi.

Alluding to such famous literary models as Archilochus, he will later claim that he had saved himself by throwing away his shield and fleeing.

When an amnesty was declared for those who had fought against the victorious Octavian, Horace, his military career and political aspirations shattered, had made an abject return to Rome to find his father dead and his estate confiscated.

Though later claiming that he was reduced to poverty, he nevertheless had had the means to purchase a profitable lifetime appointment as a scriba quaestorius, an official of the Treasury, which will allow him to get by comfortably and practice his poetic art.

Eventually finding employment as an ill-paid public clerk, Horace has spent his free time writing poetry and haunting literary circles.

His literary endeavors had attracted the attention of Virgil, who, in early 38, had introduced him to Gaius Maecenas, a man of letters from Etruria, a patron of the arts, and a powerful councilor to Octavian.

Maecenas has formed a friendship with Horace, granting him a country villa in the Sabine Hills (near modern Tivoli) that finally affords Horace the financial freedom to concentrate on his poetry.

Horace produces a collection of ten satirical poems written in hexameter verse, Sermonum Liber primus (also known as Satires I).

The Satires reflect Horace's adhesion to Octavian's attempts to deal with the contemporary challenges of restoring traditional morality, defending small landowners from large estates (latifundia), combating debt and usury, and encouraging novi homines (“new men”) to take their place next to the traditional republican aristocracy.

The Satires often exalt the new man, who is the creator of his own fortune and does not owe it to noble lineage.

Horace develops his vision with principles taken from Hellenistic philosophy: metriotes (the just mean) and autarkeia (the wise man's self-sufficiency).

The ideal of the just mean allows Horace, who is philosophically an Epicurean, to reconcile traditional morality with hedonism.

Self-sufficiency is the basis for his aspiration for a quiet life, far from political passions and unrestrained ambition.

Published probably in 35 and at the latest by 33, this first book of Satires represents Horace's first published work and establishes him as one of the great poetic talents of what will be known to history as the Augustan Age.

Horace publishes a second book of Satires in 30 BCE, using the two to revive a Latin form originated a century earlier by Lucilius and widening its poetic range.

He substitutes the unrestrained vituperations of Lucilius for Horace’s own gentle irony about shortcomings everyone possesses and should confront.

The Epodes belong to the iambic genre of 'blame poetry', as practiced by Archilochus, and it seems that Horace wrote them like his literary hero in order to shame his fellow citizens into a proper sense of their social responsibilities.

The constitutional basis of Octavian's power will remain a continuous succession of consulships from 31 until 23 BCE, but he he ostensibly “transfers the State to the free disposal of the Senate and people” in January 27, earning the misleading, though outwardly plausible, tribute that he has restored the republic.

The Senate implores him not to abandon the state—which he has absolutely no intention of doing.

At the same time he makes this purely theatrical gesture, he obtains from the Senate a ten-year tenure of an area of government (provincia) comprising Spain, Gaul, and Syria, the three regions containing the bulk of the army.

The Senate grants Octavian a number of prerogatives that legitimize his position, awarding him the military command (imperium; hence the modern term emperor).

The remaining provinces are to be governed by proconsuls appointed by the Senate in the old republican fashion.

Octavian, however, believes that his supreme prestige—crystallized in the meaningful term auctoritas—safeguards him against any defiance by these personages; and he is indeed able, more or less indirectly, to influence their appointments, just as he will be able (on the rare occasions when he regards it as desirable) to influence the appointments to the consulships and other metropolitan offices that continue to exist in “republican” fashion.

Four days after these measures, his surname of Caesar, acquired through adoption in Julius' will, is supplemented by “Augustus,” an appellation with an antique religious ring, believed to be linked etymologically with auctoritas and with the ancient practice of augury.

The word augustus is often contrasted with humanus; its adoption as the title representing the new order cleverly indicates, in an extraconstitutional fashion, his superiority over the rest of mankind.

With the aid of writers such as Virgil, Livy, and Horace, all of whom in their different ways shared the same ideas, he will show his patriotic veneration of the old Italian faith by reviving many of its ceremonials and repairing numerous temples.

The republic is dead, replaced by Octavian with the principate, "rule by the first citizen:” a monarchy disguised as a republic, with the princeps (the emperor) ostensibly ruling by commission from the Senate and the people.

Rome’s jurisconsults, prominent citizens who find the study and interpretation of the law a satisfying and respected pursuit, have great prestige, and are regularly consulted by officials and laymen alike.

With the establishment of the principate, Octavian grants certain jurisconsults the authority to issue responses to legal queries as though he himself had been asked.

At least since the rise to prominence of the Scipio family around 275 BCE, it has been a habit of many Roman generals to choose from the ranks a private force of Italians (Roman citizens and Latins), consisting of both infantry and cavalry, to act as guards of the tent or the person.

The term Praetorian derives from the tent of the commanding general or praetor of a Roman army in the field—the praetorium.

In time, this cohort had come to be known as the cohors praetoria, and various notable figures possessed one, including Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Augustus (Octavian).

As Caesar had discovered with the Legio X Equestris, a powerful unit more dangerous than its fellow legions is desirable in the field.

While Augustus understands the need to have a protector in the maelstrom of Rome, he is careful to uphold the Republican veneer of his regime.

Thus, from the ranks of the legions throughout the provinces, he allows only nine cohorts to be formed, originally of five hundred, later increased to one thousand men each, and only three kept on duty at any given time in the capital.

A small number of detached cavalry units (turmae, sing.

turma) of thirty men each are also organized.

While they patrol inconspicuously in the palace and major buildings, the others are stationed in the towns surrounding Rome; no threats are possible from these individual cohorts.

Augustus has traveled in Sicily, Greece, and Asia from 22 BCE to 19 BCE, effecting important reorganizations wherever he went.

Immense satisfaction to Rome is caused by an agreement in 20 BCE with Parthia, under which the Parthians recognize Rome's protectorate over Armenia and returns the legionary standards captured from Crassus thirty-three years earlier.

In 19 BCE, there is some adjustment of Augustus’ powers to allow him to exercise them more freely in Italy.

Comprehending well the importance of ideology and propaganda, Augustus sponsors and encourages the leading writers and artists of his time, such as the historian Livy and the poets Virgil and Horace.

Horace, whose interests have returned to the discursive mode of his earlier Satires, explores the possibilities of poetic moral essays in his 20 short Epistles, published in 20 BCE.

He publishes a longer Epistle on literary matters, entitled the “Art of Poetry,” in 19 BCE.

Roman elegiac poet Albius Tibullus, who (in the two books of poetry that can definitely be attributed to him) writes mostly on the subject of love, addresses his mistresses Delia and—later—Nemesis, as well as the young man Marathus.

Writing in a simple but elegant style, Tibullus often praises the life of rural seclusion in his bucolic poems.

He dies, probably in his late twenties, in 19 BCE.

Virgil, before setting out on a voyage to Greece and Asia during which he intends to complete the Aeneid ("the story of Aeneas”), requests that the work be destroyed if anything should happen to him before the poem is complete.

Catching a fever, he dies in Brundisium on September 21, 19 BCE.

Augustus overturns the author’s request and has the epic masterpiece published.

The poem, in twelve books, deals with the founding of Roman civilization by the Trojan Aeneas, of whose adventures Naevius and Ennius had previously written.

Virgil models the characters and events of the Aeneid after their Homeric predecessors: in the first six books, Virgil successfully unifies around the figure of Aeneas the searching theme of Homer's Odyssey; in the last six books, he analogizes that of the Iliad with his account of the war and final reconciliation of the Trojans and the Latins), creating multiple correspondences between both halves.

Through the judicious use of analogy, image, and symbol, Virgil emphasizes the cost in sacrifice and loss of humanity inherent in the ideals of Augustan Rome, while outwardly glorifying these same ideals.

The Aeneid, soon made a standard school text, becomes a national epic—an explanation of Augustan Rome’s origins and heroic past—and establishes Virgil, with Homer, as one of the great epic poets.

The huge, symmetrically planned Baths of Agrippa (Thermae Agrippae), built by Agrippa, are the first of the great thermae constructed in the city.

In their first form, constructed at the same time as the Pantheon and on axis with it, as a balaneion, they are apparently a hot-air bath with a cold plunge, not unlike a sauna.

With the completion of the Aqua Virgo, the aqueduct completed by Agrippa in 19 BCE, the baths are supplied with water and become regular thermae, with a large ornamental pool (Stagnum Agrippae) attached.

Agrippa furnishes his baths with decorations that may have been executed in glazed tiles and with works of art: the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus stands outside.

Roman elegiac poet Sextus Propertius, in his passionate poems concerning love’s vicissitudes, confesses to being, in emulation of Catullus, a slave to love.

From numerous references in his poetry it is clear he was born and raised in Umbria; modern Assisi claims for itself the honor of his birthplace.

As a boy his father died and the family lost land as part of a confiscation, probably the same one that reduced Virgil's estates when Octavian allotted lands to his veterans in 41 BCE.

Combining this with cryptic references in Ovid implying he was younger than his contemporary Tibullus, a birthdate in the early forties seems appropriate.

After his father's death, Propertius' mother had set him on course for a public career—indicating his family still had some wealth—while the abundance of obscure mythology present in his poetry indicates he received a good education.

Frequent mention of friends like Tullus—the nephew of Lucius Volcatius Tullus, consul in 33 BCE—plus the fact that he lived on Rome's Esquiline hill indicate he moved among the children of the rich and politically connected during the early part of the twenties decade.

It is during this time that he meets Cynthia, the older woman who inspires him to express his poetic genius.

Propertius publishes a first book of love elegies in 25 BCE, with Cynthia herself as the main theme; the book's complete devotion gave it the natural title Cynthia Monobiblos.

The Monobiblos must have attracted the attention of Maecenas, a patron of the arts.

who takes Propertius into his circle of court poets, which includes Horace, Virgil and Ovid.

A second, larger book of elegies is published perhaps a year later, one that includes poems addressed directly to his patron and (as expected) praises for Augustus.

The publication of a third book comes sometime after 23 BCE.

Its content shows the poet beginning to move beyond simple love themes, as some poems (e.g.

III.5) use Amor merely as a starting point for other topics.

The book also shows the poet growing tired of the demanding yet fickle Cynthia, and implies a bitter end to their torrid love affair.

Book IV, published sometime after 16 BCE, displays more of the poet's ambitious agenda, and includes several aetiological poems explaining the origin of various Roman rites and landmarks.

He spends most of his life in Rome.

Horace works on a final book of Odes until 13 BCE, and publishes two additional longer Epistles on literary matters.

Publius Ovidius Naso, who passed his youth in his native Sulmo, untouched by the civil wars, and went to Rome to continue his education shortly after peace resumed, quietly rebels against the political career intended for him by his father.

Spectacularly talented and unable to resist the literary temptations of the now-peaceful capital, he is drawn into writing poetry.

By 23 BCE, Ovid—the name by which he is commonly known—not yet twenty, was reading his works to appreciative audiences.

By the time he turns thirty in 13, he Rome’s most successful poet.

Agrippa had been appointed governor of the eastern provinces a second time in 17 BCE, where his just and prudent administration have won him the respect and goodwill of the provincials, especially from the Jewish population.

Agrippa has also restored effective Roman control over the Cimmerian Chersonnese (modern-day Crimea) during his governorship.

Agrippa's tribunicia potestas is renewed in 13 BCE, and at this time, without doubt he receives (or had renewed) a grant of imperium majus.

At the death of Lepidus toward the end of the year, Augustus adds to his own string of honorifics his former partner’s title of high priest (pontifex maximus), head of the Roman state religion.

Augustus, in 8 BCE, loses another of his intimates, Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, who had been the adviser of his early days and was an outstanding patron of letters for the new generation of 'Augustan' poets.

Foremost among these is Horace, lionized as Rome's greatest lyric poet.

Horace, upon his death bed and having no heirs, relinquishes his farm to his friend and emperor Augustus, to be used for Imperial needs.

He dies at Tibur in the Sabine Hills on November 27, 8 BCE.

His farm is here today and is a spot of pilgrimage for the literary elite.