Rome's Patron: The Lives and Afterlives of Maecenas

Maecenas was an influential patron of the arts in ancient Rome, supporting Roman poets such as Virgil, Horace, and Propertius. He was seen as a mascot of cultural flexibility and innovation, a pioneer of gender fluidity, and a bearer of imperial demands. His legacy continues to be felt in literature, philanthropy, and the fantasies surrounding his gardens, buildings, and objects.

Format: Hardback
Length: 488 pages
Publication date: 27 February 2024
Publisher: Princeton University Press

An unelected statesman with exceptional powers, a patron of the arts, and a luxury-loving friend of the emperor Augustus, Maecenas was one of the most prominent and distinctive personalities of ancient Rome. Yet the traces he left behind are unreliable and tantalizingly scarce. Instead of attempting a conventional biography, Emily Gowers shows in Romes Patron that it is possible to tell a different story, one about Maecenass influence, his changing identities, and the many narratives attached to him across two millennia.

Romes Patron explores Maecenass appearances in the central works of Augustan poetry written in his name, Virgils Georgics, Horaces Odes, and Propertiuss elegies, and in later works of Latin literature that reassess his influence. For the Roman poets he supported, Maecenas was a mascot of cultural flexibility and innovation, a pioneer of gender fluidity, and a bearer of imperial demands who could be exposed as a secret sympathizer with their own values. For those excluded from his circle, he represented either favoritism and indulgence or the lost ideal of a patron in perfect collaboration with the authors he championed.

As Gowers shows, Maecenas had and continues to have a unique cachet—in the fantasies that still surround the buildings and objects so tenuously associated with him; in literature, from Ariosto and Ben Johnson to Phillis Wheatley and W. B. Yeats; and in philanthropy, where his name has been surprisingly adaptable to more democratic forms of patronage.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691193144