Those are all excellent choices for favourite ancient Romans, especially Catullus; I love poems 5 and 7, and 50 (especially Charles Martin's translation), and I'm increasingly coming round to 16 now I realise the point of it is that a poet's art is no guide to what he's really like, and so the final joke is that just because he says in a poem "pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo", it says nothing at all about the kind of person he really is, if anything the opposite, and really he is just as soft as Furius and Aurelius accuse him of being. Catullus is one of those people whose poems appear really straightforward but are wonderfully ironic. :D
Augustus was a total prick though, you're right.
Also, I hope you do get to draw Mark Antony and Lucius Vorenus sometime! And yessss I would love to see some Byzantine drawings from you; their clothing was so cool! You can see how it evolved from Roman dress in some places, but it just looks so different and I love how elaborate it was. The Byzantine Empire as a whole is really fascinating to me, because in many ways it is Roman but the Christian and Greek influences make it something completely other as well.
Finally, I love Caravaggio too--his paintings are so striking and I always feel moved by them, in a way I don't with other painters.
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Date: 2013-12-25 12:24 am (UTC)Augustus was a total prick though, you're right.
Also, I hope you do get to draw Mark Antony and Lucius Vorenus sometime! And yessss I would love to see some Byzantine drawings from you; their clothing was so cool! You can see how it evolved from Roman dress in some places, but it just looks so different and I love how elaborate it was. The Byzantine Empire as a whole is really fascinating to me, because in many ways it is Roman but the Christian and Greek influences make it something completely other as well.
Finally, I love Caravaggio too--his paintings are so striking and I always feel moved by them, in a way I don't with other painters.