This volume examines how urban Latin and Greek literature reacted to politics, often in subtle ways perhaps analogous to the techniques employed by writers in the Soviet Union working under a watchful censorship, in the period extending from the 50s BCE to approximately 120 CE--from Lucretius to Seutonius or, alternatively, from the age of Caesar to that of Hadrian. The editors (professors of classics and Latin at the U. of Otago, New Zealand, and the U. of Sydney, Australia) present 21 essays that explore such topics as political literary suppression in Imperial Rome, the political nuances of the disparities between the way of life advocated in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura and that lived by leading politicians, Cicero's speech acts of minor political resistance under Julius Caeser, connections between political and geographical features of the Vergilian narrative, Livy's discussion of modes of distributing power in society in Ab Urbe Condita, and Ovid's response to Augustan discourse. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)