Literature is the best way to understand ancient Rome: its writers reveal the people’s spirit and values. The Roman way was close to modern Romanticism, premised on sentiment, and its leading lights illustrate simple but grand ideals, in contrast to the austere classicism of the ancient Greeks. The first evidence of Roman-ness is the comedy of Plautus and Terence, who preceded modern Westerns, for example in the division of roles between male and female; Aristophanes and Menander left no imprint. The poets Catullus, passionate and forlorn, and Horace, dispassionate and effete, also establish modern tropes. Later authors — Livy, Virgil, Seneca, Juvenal – are romantic, reacting in part to the ugliness of the empire’s corruption and the city’s sprawl. (Cicero’s letters evince the quotidian affairs of the elite.) Stoicism was a second-rate Greek philosophy turned precept for religious action (of a sort) and seedbed of Christianity. While the Greeks stood for harmony and moderation, Romans preferred discipline and absolutes. Its citizens perpetually sought to return to bygone days of the individual initiative sufficient for military conquer or settlement. The ethical complications of administering an empire were, paradoxically, more the bailiwick of their predecessors.