Variety in Roman Literature and Thought

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Classical culture is often thought to be governed by ideals of order, decorum and unity, but this would be to neglect the importance of variety as a value and as an aesthetic principle. This study examines the significance of variety both as a concept in Roman thought and as a phenomenon in Latin literature. The different value that might be attributed to variety in different spheres of activity tells us much about Roman culture and its areas of dispute, while the character of Latin literature is decisively affected by the pursuit of variety. The first part of the study considers the concept of variety in Roman thought, while the second and third parts focus on variety in Latin literature, first in relation to particular genres and then in the miscellaneous collections (of poems, letters or essays) which are such an important feature of Latin literature. In literary genres which feature a first-person speaker, the speaking subject may be characterized by the way in which that subject confronts a varied world. In collections of varied individual units (poems, essays, letters) variety constructs a particular kind of world, and the principle of variety is used to different effect in each case. Little has been written on variety, partly because it seems too broad and elusive as a concept or too obvious as an aesthetic principle to be worth pursuing. The object of this study is to bring it into focus and, in the final chapter, to consider how the Roman concept of variety survives, functions and changes in European thought from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century and beyond.