Who's the best Latin poet and why?

Who's the best Latin poet and why?

Lucretius.

Ovid and Virgil too I guess.

Ausonius is better poet than Virgil. Lucretius is great but I think Ovid edges him out. I could just be biased because Ovid's more than one book

Montaigne thought it was Lucretius, which is good enough for me.

Catullus

HORACE

Propertius because im a hipster

Ovid is the only person I would be willing to consider as Homer's rival

This.

At least he's the most relatable.

>tfw no gf

Myself

Juvenal

Post your Latin verse m8

Lucretius without a doubt.

Paul Claudel about Virgil:

>C'est le plus grand génie que l'humanité ait jamais produit, inspiré d'un souffle vraiment divin, le prophète de Rome

Ovid's probably my favourite

imperator sum
suge verpa mea nunc
barbare stulte

Caring so much about dead roman men is ridiculous.

Tfw reading the Waves and there's a dude who always sucks Catullus's dick

Kawaii haiku amicum ^__^

verpa sugenda est, plebeie

Virgil 100%

Lucretius 100%

Beautiful

I've never studied French, just parsing this based on Romance vocabulary and studying German grammar.

>It is the most grand genius which humanity has ever produced, inspired cheese divine raiment, the prophet of Rome.

Pallida Mori aequa pulsata pede pauperum tabernas. Regumque turris

Homer wrote in Greek not Latin.

Remember when Catullus gave an insane eulogy to a dead bird?

sounds like something I would do tbqhwufam

That's the clash of religious and secular thought in France. It's funny how Lucretius was used against both pagan and christian religion. His text almost didn't survive the middle ages. He's brilliant. You could say that he is the enlightenment of Rome.
As for Virgil, I think his eclogues are far more superior than the Aeneid. Both masterpieces though.
And what's most important - they both started with the Greeks.
And then there's Ovid. Probably most fun to read. That's the spirit of the French bourgeoisie, satire and parody. He's good. He's really good.
I'm going with Virgil. Atheism and irony are an easy bait, but you need a certain je ne sais quoi to follow tradition and religion like Virgil did. That's why he's a part of the Homer-Virgil-Dante trinity.

>inspired cheese divine raiment
>inspired cheese

this is huh, wow

This is why he disqualifies him for this thread.

Lucretius is great overall but there are serious problems in his poems, including passages so obscure even native Latin speakers weren't sure wtf he was talking about (the bit about time being an accident of place springs to mind).

Ovid's like the Pope of Latin literature, great poet but even when he's being as serious as he can be I feel like he's smirking at me. He is a delight to read but too affected.

Catullus is truly great for his range. I think only Horace matches him for range of subject in Latin or Greek, of what I've read, and Catullus is so much more raw and honest than Horace. Some of his poems are better than others though. I think his Attis poem is his best. Advanced and difficult meter handled in a way that seems easy, fast and rapid movement which is so hard to sustain in Latin, and a profoundly philosophical/mystical subject.

Overall, considering everything. I think Virgil is the greatest Latin poet because only Virgil has not one line in his entire corpus that might be expunged. Virgil is also the toughest nut to crack of them all and only with repeated readings in the original will he reveal what he has. They didn't think he was some sort of sage for nothing.

I'll also say about Lucretius that most of his popularity as a meme online stems from his atheism/materialism/hedonism, but the most interesting thing about his poem is how rapturous and spiritual it is, and how obsessed it is with death and suffering. His claims that death is nothing to fear are so stringent, and juxtaposed with accounts of the pain of death that are so tender and powerful, that he seems to be trying to convince himself as much of the reader. The poem that opens with an invocation of Venus Genetrix, goddess of spring and earth and growth, ends with the plague of Athens, the inconsonant atoms of the atmosphere driving people to a painful and horrible end, destroying the very fabric of society. And then Lucretius killed himself leaving the poem unfinished, if you want to believe the myths.

Is it edgy to say Virgil or something? Virgil

it was his cock

I like to think it was both, there really was a passer and it reminded Catullus of his mentule and it was a big joke.

Lol. Another vote for Virgil from me. But for his Georgics over even the Eclogues (again, saying NOTHING about the Aeneid). When farming was manual labor that ate up the hours of men (so they could in turn, eat). Divinity

tum pingues agni et tum mollissima vina,
tum somni dulces densaeque in montibus umbrae.

Then [in spring:] the lambs plumb and the wines mellowest,
Then are sleeps sweet and shadows soft, densest on the hills.

That I could be a farmer of his words forever, would my sweat purple the earth. And hats off to Lucretius, Ovid, Catullus and all the rest

Bump.

What's your opinion on Petronius (his verse)?

>I'll also say about Lucretius that most of his popularity as a meme online stems from his atheism/materialism/hedonism
uh m8 you're reading him wrong (you even contradict the atheism thing by showing you've read the opening, and his hedonism is very debatable since he wrote the poem for memmius to not get himself killed) (i think you're also confusing the myth because the most common telling is that he thought memmius was fucking up too much to write him often any more)

>has problems with lucretius
>likes ovid catullus and virgil
don't blame the last threes friend and hero for you being too dense

>poem for memmius to not get himself killed

There's no evidence for that at all.

>you even contradict the atheism thing by showing you've read the opening

Atheism was a common charge leveled at Epicureans because the gods they describe were not really gods at all the way most people understand gods. In that sense they were atheists.

> his hedonism is very debatable

Debate this.
o miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca!
qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis
degitur hoc aevi quod cumquest! nonne videre
nihil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut qui
corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur
iucundo sensu cura semota metuque?

I love Lucretius, I've read him many times over, but please tell me how great these lines are:

tempus item per se non est, sed rebus ab ipsis
consequitur sensus, transactum quid sit in aevo,
tum quae res instet, quid porro deinde sequatur;
nec per se quemquam tempus sentire fatendumst
semotum ab rerum motu placidaque quiete.
denique Tyndaridem raptam belloque subactas
Troiiugenas gentis cum dicunt esse, videndumst
ne forte haec per se cogant nos esse fateri,
quando ea saecla hominum, quorum haec eventa fuerunt,
inrevocabilis abstulerit iam praeterita aetas;
namque aliud terris, aliud regionibus ipsis
eventum dici poterit quod cumque erit actum.
denique materies si rerum nulla fuisset
nec locus ac spatium, res in quo quaeque geruntur,
numquam Tyndaridis forma conflatus amore
ignis Alexandri Phrygio sub pectore gliscens
clara accendisset saevi certamina belli
nec clam durateus Troiianis Pergama partu
inflammasset equos nocturno Graiiugenarum;
perspicere ut possis res gestas funditus omnis
non ita uti corpus per se constare neque esse
nec ratione cluere eadem qua constet inane,
sed magis ut merito possis eventa vocare
corporis atque loci, res in quo quaeque gerantur.

Lucretius himself recognized the difficulty of expressing these ideas in Latin hexameters. Lucretius is great, but sometimes he is not clear, and sometimes he is plodding. Then he'll surprise you with some unexpected simile for atomic motion or what have you, of course.