Following are the definitions of several words used in this listing of classical authors.
- Allegory:
- The presentation of a subject under the guise of another suggestively similar.
- Apology:
- A defence or vindication from accusation.
- Apotheosis:
- The exultation of any person, principal, or practice.
- Classical:
- Referring to Greek and Latin authors in general.
- Dialogue:
- Literary genre in which characters, usually real but sometimes imaginary, conduct a conversation, pursuing a single theme but admitting some of the digression and inconsequence found in normal conversation.
- Didactic:
- Designed to give instruction.
- Discourse:
- A spoken or written treatment of a subject at length.
- Elegiacs:
- Poems written in alternate lines of hexameter and pentameter, being originally the metre of lament, but later being used for a variety of poems.
- Epic:
- A narrative poem on the grand scale in majestic style concerning the exploits and adventures of superhuman hero (or heroes) engaged in a quest or some serious endeavor.
- Epic Cycle:
- The name given to a collection of epics, of which only about 120 lines survive, written by various poets in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.E., which could be arranged so as to make a chronological narrative extending from the beginning of the world to the end of the heroic age.
- Epigram:
- A verse inscription.
- Epistle:
- A letter, chiefly applied to those letters in ancient times which rank as literature.
- Ethics:
- The science of morals.
- Greek Novel:
- A romantic narrative in rhetorical prose, developed in the Hellenistic age, being poor in characterization but strong in plot.
- Heroic Age:
- A period of two or three generations believed to have existed in archaic and classical Greece, during which there were heroes and heroines, the descendants of the union of gods and mortals, but still essentially human.
- Idyll:
- A poem which describes an episode or scene from idealized rural life.
- Memoir:
- A record of events, a history treating of mattters from the personal knowledge of the writer.
- Metaphysics:
- Theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of Being and Knowing.
- Monograph:
- A separate treatise on a single object or classs of objects.
- Parody:
- The burlesquing of serious poetry for comic effect.
- Philosophy:
- The love, study, or pursuit of wisdom, or of knowledge of things and their causes, whether theoretical or practical.
- Rhetoric:
- The theoretical art of speaking so as to persuade.
- Satire:
- A poem, now occasionally a prose composition, in which prevailing vices or follies are held up to ridicule.
- Satyr:
- In Greek mythology, attendants of the god Dionysus, boisterous creatures of the woods and hills, represented as mainlyof human form but with some bestial aspect.
- Satyric Drama:
- A semi-comic play in which the chorus was always composed of satyrs.
- Treatise:
- A book or writing that treats some particular subject.
