The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglamorate Network and LIT Hub Radio.

Hello everyone, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature Podcast.

I'm so glad you're here and welcome to the show.

One quick note before we begin, you have found one of the oldest episodes in our archive.

The show doesn't discuss literature in chronological order,

so you won't be missing anything if you start with the more recent episodes

instead of the earliest ones.

And, let's be honest honest the show's quality has improved

quite a bit since these early days. But of course where you begin is up to you and

if you'd like to give this one a try please be my guest. All of the episodes in the archive are yours to enjoy for free.

Hello, I'm Jack Wilson. Welcome to the History of Literature. Hello everyone this is Jack Wilson. Welcome to the podcast. We're going to be continuing our journey through the history of

literature today by jumping from India back over to Rome. There's a republic going on in Rome. It's about to fall.

That's going to be our topic today. We're going to talk about poetry and empire. Now, I've always been fascinated by Rome, by the Roman Republic, by the Roman

Empire, why? I think it's because I grew up in the Cold War. There were two superpowers,

clash of giant civilizations. I was just a nobody, a pawn, just a spec on the population map.

What? I was part of America. I was part of this giant civilization everything political was viewed through that prism.

USS R versus the USA. It affected all of us, the threat of nuclear war hovering over us.

All of our understanding of the world, our relationships to other countries.

It was all viewed as part of the Cold War.

That was the world that grew up in. It's hard to shake things when you come

of age during that time. It was all I knew. Right after the Vietnam War. A lot of people were thinking and rethinking our role in the world.

Went from World War II to Vietnam, and then my generation, the one that followed right after we were trying to figure out from the grown-ups around us,

...