Recitationes

These would be copied on scrolls by copyists, often freedmen of Greek origin, and were intended to be sold by these book publishers to wealthy people.

[1][2] Starting towards the end of the Republic, the recitations developed substantially under the Empire, especially under the reign of Augustus, thanks to the poet and politician Gaius Asinius Pollio, who became well known because of the fashion for this new entertainment.

The purpose of reading aloud in public was to make themselves known to an audience in order to obtain social and monetary protection; the recitations took place, for the most part, within privileged closed circles.

The orders were often intended to reproduce Greek works in Latin and in the Roman fashion of the moment.

Thus, in the Eclogues, Virgil takes up the Greek topos of the dialogue between shepherds of Arcadia and builds from there a poem in Latin meter.