This is a wide-ranging collection of essays on ancient Roman literary careers and their reception in later European literature, with contributions by leading experts. Starting from the three major Roman models for constructing a literary career Virgil (the rota Vergiliana), Horace, and Ovid the volume then looks at alternative and counter-models in antiquity: Propertius, Juvenal, Cicero and Pliny. A range of post-antique responses to the ancient patterns are then examined, from Dante to Wordsworth, and including Petrarch, Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, Dryden, and Goethe. These chapters pose...