Epic in Republican Rome discusses authors of now-fragmentary epic poetry not simply as predecessors of Vergil, but as pioneers and poets in their own rights. Behind the early literary experiments of Andronicus and Naevius, Ennius and Cicero, lie issues of poetry and patronage, and of cultural assimilation and national ideology, that not only come to characterize Roman literature of all periods, but continue to shape modern responses to that literature.
