On The Translation Of Ancient Greek Works By Ancient Roman Authors

Roman culture develops on the basis of Greek culture. The Greek influence hasexsited before the contacts of Rome and Greece. And this influence is indirect,brought by the other nations and states. Through military war, territorial expansion,there is an increasing number of contacts between Rome and Greek states. The Greekinfluence includes all aspects. This paper will discuss the translation of Greek worksby Roman writers.Rome develops from a small country into an empire across three continents ofEurope, Asia and Africa by force mainly. First they struggled for their own survialagainst Etruscan's rule, and fought against Gaul's invasion and the threat of theirneighbors. When they consolidated their rule, Rome embarked on the overseasexpansion. With the conquest of the Italian peninsula to the south part, there weremore and more contacts with Greece and more and more affections. After theannexation of the entire Italian peninsula, Rome turned his eyes to overseas, andfulfilled the appropriation of the Western Mediterranean through three Punic wars in acentury. Then the battlefield has shifted to the Eastern Mediterrean. After beatingMacedonia and Seleueus, the Eastern Mediterrean has become a Roman province.Face to the resistance of the Greek states, Rome adopted a policy of repression, andfinally annexed Greece into his own territory. In the 2nd century BC, Rome became abig empire across three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, the Mediterrean becamea Roman lake.With the Roman conquest, the Greek influence expands gradually to all aspectsof life. Under the strong impact of Greek culture, there were two different attitudestowards the Greek culture in Roman society: one part led by Hippias promoted Greekculture, for they found the glory of Greek culture bringing a new vitality to Romancommunity; the other part led by Cato objected to the spread of Greek culture in Rome,for they found the bad thoughts coming into Roman society inevitably and destroyedthe Roman tradition of morality and simplity. However, the latter didn't play a real part.Before the succession of Greek culture, there are also some forms of literature.History shows that before the 3rd century BC, Rome had exsited labor songs, religionscarols, party songs, ironic songs, Fdisikeni songs, Satu Arrhenius poetic, complexdrama, Atrazine drama, simulation drama, historical notes and speeches. Some had lostand we can only know of these forms from the words of some works. Some wereaffected by other nations, and developed on the basis of local culture, which made fewliterary works being born before the contacts of each other. In early time, the heritage of Greece for Rome was the works mainly intranslation no matter in form or content. However, the translation of works from anearly old time handed down extremely limitedly. The translation of works were mainlyin drama. And the tragedy in addition to some fragments were also scattered. Comedyby Plautus and Terence were the main part, and followed the original translation ofbasic works, but changed the original text according to the needs of society.Translation makes Rome not only studying the advanced culture of Greece, butalso stimulating the creation of national culture in Rome. Some books written inGreek, for the limited material, has been lost in the long history, but some ofthem——Greek thoughts and writings——has been preserved through the translationof Roman writers. These translation works are also the part of European literature infuture.