Abstract
AbstractThis chapter offers an overview of some Latin writers from the second to the fourth century ce, who manifest different attitudes towards luxuria: Pliny the Younger witnesses the acceptance of a certain degree of luxury in everyday Roman life as typical of senatorial class; historiography is a conservative literary genre, so Suetonius and Tacitus still look at it as a mark of degradation, whose main model is Nero; in his novel, Apuleius shows the switch from the economic to the erotic meaning of the term. Finally, Christian authors, such as Tertullian, Augustine, and Prudentius, on one side share the focus on lust which will lead luxuria, read in this sense, to enter the list of the Seven Capital Sins; on the other side, they show strong links with Pagan tradition and rely on its commonplaces (e.g. the connection with desire, pleasure, and weakness) and rhetorical devices (e.g. personification as a seducing woman).
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
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