Variety in Roman Literature and Thought

古典文化通常被认为是由秩序、礼仪和统一的理想所支配的，但这将忽视多样性作为一种价值和审美原则的重要性。这项研究考察了变化作为罗马思想中的一个概念和拉丁文学中的一种现象的意义。不同活动领域的多样性可能带来的不同价值告诉了我们许多关于罗马文化及其争议领域的信息，而拉丁文学的特征则受到对多样性的追求的决定性影响。研究的第一部分讨论了罗马思想中的变化概念，第二和第三部分关注了拉丁文学中的变化，首先是与特定体裁有关的变化，然后是各种诗集(诗歌、信件或散文)的变化，这是拉丁文学的一个重要特征。在以第一人称说话者为特色的文学体裁中，说话主体的特点可能是该主体面对多种多样的世界的方式。在不同的个体单元(诗歌、散文、信件)的集合中，多样性构建了一种特定的世界，而多样性的原则在每一种情况下都有不同的效果。关于多样性的文章很少，部分原因是作为一个概念，它似乎太宽泛和难以捉摸，或者作为一种美学原则太明显，不值得追求。这项研究的目的是使它成为焦点，并在最后一章中，考虑罗马变化的概念是如何从文艺复兴到18世纪末及以后的欧洲思想中幸存下来的、作用和变化的。

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.