If some miracle you could be transported back to any period of Roman history which Latin author would you most like to meet?
I’d love to share a drink or three with Ovid-I’m sure he could keep you entertained for hours with endless stories.
Horace would be good for a drink too but I somehow think he’d be rather pompous in his conversation.
Someone fun…like Petronius, Seneca, or Plautus. Ovid could definitely keep you entertained with stories, but Petronius or Plautus would show you a great night out on the town. 
I would imagine that hanging out with Horace or Cicero would get very old, very fast…Cicero would likely talk your head off! 
Isaac Newton. Not Roman, but he’s a Latin author. 
It would have to be Catullus! He was definitely a character, and perhaps a bad boy. 
It would not be Cicero, a boring & pompous ****!! (Although he does remind me of some barristers I have met)
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola ,
humanist scholar , neoplatonist , kabbalist , “knight errant of philosophy”
Cicero-no!
If I read one more line including the words “ratione” and “civitatis”, I shall wither away from boredom.
Catullus would probably be hot-tempered and fly into a rage at the slightest misunderstanding. Passionate though and everything Cicero was not.
I don’t know why everyone is bashing Cicero. I understand that he could get very boring very quickly, but I still wouldn’t mind meeting one of the world’s finest statesmen.
The timing of this posting is very strange for me. I was just telling my wife about a dream that I had last night. I dreamt that I was having a conversation with Catullus. I kept talking about his passionate, inflammatory poetry and he kept trying to talk about his more sober, elegiac work (such as his valedictory poem about his brother’s death). Eventually he became angry with me and that’s where the dream ended.
Can you say “synchronicity”?
I have read (don’t know if it’s true or not) that Newton was a pompous rear end. Apparently the “standing on the shoulders of giants” remark was really him being facetious because he didn’t have much respect for those who came before him. I wish I knew more about whether that’s all true or not.
I’ve heard the same thing. Galileo was also not humble.
Anywho, I’d like to meet Caesar. I haven’t read anything from him, but his name is the most famous. I’d also like to meet St. Jerome, the best translator of the Bible, and ask him to share just a tiny bit of his vast knowledge with me.
also like to meet St. Jerome, the best translator of the Bible, and ask him to share just a tiny bit of his vast knowledge with me.
I too would choose to meet Jerome. My first question would be, what’s up with all the abl. of duration of time in the Vulgate? Why not accusative?
-David
He would say, “It’s called the Vulgate, not the Cicero-gate.”
I think I would most like to meet Ovid, but that’s just based on the persona he creates for his poems - I wonder how much he was really like that guy.
But if you extend it to all the ancient world, not just Latin, it would definitely, without a doubt, no question be Herodotus.
Well, you might consider him in the light of this passage:
“Nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea.”
Given his reputation as a shameless thief of other men’s ideas, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Newton had read John of Salisbury. I wouldn’t deny Newton’s genius, I simply abhor the man’s reputed character.
Neal Stephenson describes a very nasty Newton in his Baroque trilogy.
Anyway, me, I’d like to spend time with Catullus, Propertius, Hugh Primas, or the Archpoet. An evening with all of them together would be quite a night.
He would say, “It’s called the Vulgate, not the Cicero-gate.”
haha 
Caesar fo sho. he’s hella (as hella generally refert to quality rather than quantity) cool, and I dig how he, Caesar, is bald.
-Jon
I think he was known for his comb-over actually, didn’t like the baldness much himself.
I bet Catullus was an absolute nerd, one of those linguist types, whose whole exciting world existed only in his head.
There would be some humor in hearing Nero sing, but he’s not an author of course.
I guess it would have be Ovid, being mocked by the savages at Tomi while powerlessly reaching for his former glory and skill. Poor bloke.
I’d just love to live through the whole hundred years of the classical aera and know them all! My first reaction upon visiting the city of Rome and amazing at its wonders was, “I wish I could live a whole lifetime just in Rome.”
It was just unfortunate that his statemanship didn’t get him anywhere!
Some people think the “shoulders of giants” remark was a backhanded swipe at Robert Hooke, who presumably was to short to qualify as a Newtonian footladder. However, not everyone agrees with this interpretation of the letter:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Isaac_Newton
I don’t think anyone interprets the remark as a general statement of contempt for scientific predecessors – on the contrary, it was probably meant as stated, with no irony.
Newton had a long life. I’m sure he managed to piss off quite a few people. I suspect he was painfully introverted and had general problems communicating properly with the people around him. This is one of the reasons it would be fun to meet him – to see if his odd personality was an extreme form of the awkward geekhood that is nowaday so celebrated.
You have to hand it to the man. The Principia can be considered the founding document of modern science. And it’s in Latin. This guy figured out why the Moon goes around the Earth, in a way that no one else had before. But then he still managed to write something like this:
Well to give him his due he was remarkably good at everything he did (apart from poetry) Admired as a consul, a first-rate lawyer, saving Rome from Catiline and really he could have exiled himself from Antony’s henchmen if he had wanted to but Livy states that he just got tired of running away and accepted the inevitable. He was, after all, well advanced in years.
But still he’s not someone who I would want to meet, sorry to say.
I think I’d like meeting Cicero… but then again, I do enjoy listening to pompous windbags.
No, seriously.
David