In Rome, tastes can be both refined and crude. Romans will visit the arena to get their share of gore and guts as readily as they will go to the amphitheatre for performances of plays and mime. They love music (the emperor Nero is a proficient public performer on the lyre) and they love fighting – truly an empire of both gladiators and poets.

Public readings in both poetry and prose are popular with Rome's educated élite – and with those who aspire to be counted among them. Many emperors sponsor the best poets of the day. However, this can be a risky business for those so favoured, who can find that they pay with their lives when that favour is removed.

A new kind of poetry
One of the first of Rome's poet-stars is Gaius Valerius Catullus, born in Verona in 87 BC. Catullus challenges conservative opinion with a new kind of Latin poetry about mundane, often trivial, subjects. His great hero is Callimachus of Cyrene, a Greek poet of two centuries earlier, who first introduced short verses, epigrams and 'mini-epics' as an alternative to the grand epic poetry of Homer.

Virgil
In 37 BC, Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) publishes his Bucolics, a series of poems celebrating the lives of ordinary Roman peasants and shepherds. It is a new style of poetry featuring ordinary people – rather than heroes and gods – whom Virgil imbues with romantic and sentimental feelings in an idealised rural setting. His most famous work, the Aeneid, which first appeared in 19 BC, is an epic poem based around myths concerning the founding of Rome. It tells the story of the Trojan, Aeneas, who leaves Troy after its fall to the Greeks and journeys around the Mediterranean (like Odysseus in the Greek writer Homer's epic Odyssey) before finally landing in Latium and founding Alba Longa, the precursor of Rome.

In the court of Augustus
Until his death in 8 BC, Maecenas is one of Rome's leading patrons of the arts through his sponsorship of the poets Virgil, Horace and Propertius. Horace, in particular, owes his position as virtually state poet of the Augustan era to Maecenas, who first introduces him to Augustus. Horace's works, including his Satires, Odes and the Ars poetica, prove enormously popular with the support of the Augustan court.

It doesn't do well to offend the emperor, however. The poet Ovid is exiled to the Black Sea for his Ars amatoria ('The Art of Love'), which riles Augustus for two reasons. The one given publicly is that the emperor objects to the erotic content of Ovid's verses, but his anger is more likely to be connected to the political satire contained in parts of the work.

Nero
'He affected a zeal for poetry and gathered a group of associates with some faculty for making verse but not such as to have yet attracted remark. These, after dining, sat with him, devising a connection for the lines they had brought from home or invented on the spot, and eking out the phrases suggested, for better or worse, by their master; the method being obvious even from the general cast of the poems, which run without energy or inspiration and lack unity of style.' Tacitus on Nero

'What an artist the world is losing!' are Nero's last words before he commits suicide in AD 68. As well as being an avid sponsor of the arts, Nero likes nothing better than to perform himself – an activity that does nothing for his reputation as emperor. He also writes an epic poem on the fall of Troy, which he is accused of singing while Rome burns in the great fire of AD 64. Contrary to later popular belief, however, Nero doesn't 'fiddle while Rome burns' – though he may have played the lyre.

Hadrian's Athenaeum
Like Nero, the emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138) is also a great sponsor of the arts. Nicknamed the 'Greekling' for his love of all things Greek, he sets up an institute of liberal arts called the Athenaeum. He also tries his hand at verse, copying the style of a little-known 5th-century BC Greek poet named Antimachus, whom he claims is better than Homer.

The games
The most amazing spectacles in Roman life – comparable with anything in history – are the games. Although modern sensitivities would balk at describing what happens in the arena as part of the 'arts', the Romans make no such distinction, and there is no doubt that the games play a central role in Roman 'cultural' life. Definitely not for the squeamish, but if your stomach is up to it, these are the ones not to miss:

• 17 BC: Passing of an era The Ludi saeculares ('Secular Games') are celebrated in Rome – ordered by Augustus in the 10th year of his rule. Religious rituals, sacrifices and games take place to mark the passing of one era, or saeculum, in Roman history and the beginning of a new one.

• AD 8: The Augustan games Julius Caesar was the first to put on grand public shows in the form that is to become familiar as the imperial games; 30 elephants die in one. But it is Augustus who turns the games into a massive imperial industry. He sets up the first of three gladiator schools in Rome and, in AD 8, puts on shows involving as many as 10,000 gladiators and 3,500 animals. One of the best gladiator schools is at Capua, a sort of centre of excellence of the gladiatorial world. This is where Spartacus, leader of the great slave revolt of 73-71 BC, was trained and started his revolt.

• AD 39: Caligula on water In the summer of AD 39, Caligula stages one of the greatest of all Roman spectacles in the Bay of Naples. He assembles a fleet of merchant ships and others specially constructed for the occasion to form a 'bridge' two miles long across the bay from Bauli to Puteoli. This is the stage for two days of events, the highlights of which include Caligula (wearing the breastplate of Alexander, which he is said to have taken from the latter's tomb at Alexandria) riding across one way on his racehorse and returning the other way by chariot. On other occasions, Caligula has special pleasure boats built. Two of these vast vessels will turn up in Lake Nemi, when it is drained in the 1920s. They have mosaic-lined decks, piped water and even heated baths, as well as marble columns and bronze fittings. According to Suetonius, Caligula's boats have 'sterns set with precious gems, multicoloured sails, huge spacious baths, colonnades and banquet halls, and even a great variety of vines and fruit trees'.

• AD 41: Claudius kills 19,000 Caligula's successor, Claudius, takes the opportunity provided by the draining of a lake near Rome to hold his own naval spectacular, involving 100 warships with 19,000 condemned prisoners on board. There are only 100 survivors.

• AD 80: Grand opening of the Colosseum Contrary to popular belief, the emperor Nero actually scales back the games, but by now they are well established throughout the empire. In AD 80, the emperor Titus opens the Colosseum in Rome. It has taken eight years to build, holds 50,000 spectators and is in use for 400 years.

• AD 107: Trajan's games The emperor Trajan, who extends the empire to its furthest limits, holds a spectacular celebratory games in AD 107 to mark the end of the Dacian Wars.

• AD 180-192: Emperor in the arena Visit the arena at any time during the rule of the emperor Commodus and you may find him appearing there personally. In one particularly spectacular period, some 9,000 animals are killed in 100 days of games, including hundreds by Commodus himself – usually from the safety of a raised walkway.

Other spectacles
Other 'don't miss' spectacles include:

• AD 274 Zenobia's parade In a triumph ordered by the emperor Aurelian – and said to be the most spectacular ever staged in Rome – Zenobia, the queen of Syria, is paraded in golden chains in a golden chariot through the streets of Rome. Tetricus, the rebel 'emperor' from the secessionist Gallic Empire, follows in another chariot, while Aurelian himself rides in a gem-encrusted chariot drawn by four stags. Hundreds of wild animals and elephants complete the spectacle.

• AD 281 Probus's triumph The emperor Probus celebrates victories against Germanic tribes with a series of spectacles. On one day at the Colosseum, 200 lions, 200 leopards and 300 bears are slaughtered, while for another event, the Circus Maximus is planted with mature trees to look like a forest. Prisoners taken during the war are then killed in gladiatorial combat.

Books
Roman interest in books really takes off in the 2nd century BC, when libraries looted from the east are among the spoils of war brought back to Rome. The first public library is established during Augustus's reign by the poet-soldier Gaius Asinius Pollio; by the end of the 1st century AD there are at least 20 in Rome. Booksellers can also found in virtually every major town or city throughout the empire. A kind of mass production of books is achieved by the use of slave scribes; the books are written on long – usually papyrus – scrolls called volumen.

As well as reading privately (or having their slaves read to them), Romans are also immensely fond of public readings. Even the emperor Claudius, renowned for his speech impediment, conducts public readings of his works, while Hadrian builds the Athenaeum especially for such events. (Most large houses have a special room, the auditorium, in which readings take place.)

Under Greek influence, novels flourish throughout the empire, although few are published in Latin. Among those that are, Petronius's Satyricon, published during Nero's reign, is a good yarn about likeable, low-life rogues. And Apuleius's The Golden Ass, written in the mid-2nd century AD, describes how the author sees Rome after being turned into an ass.

'He passed his days in sleep, and his nights in business, or in joy and revelry. Indolence was at once his passion and his road to fame. What others did by vigour and industry, he accomplished by his love of pleasure and luxurious ease. Unlike the men who profess to understand social enjoyment, and ruin their fortunes, he led a life of expense, without profusion; an epicure, yet not a prodigal; addicted to his appetites, but with taste and judgment; a refined and elegant voluptuary.' Tacitus on Petronius

Wall paintings, mosaics and sculpture
Roman art finds some of its finest expression in the wall paintings, mosaics and sculptures that adorn the town houses and villas of the wealthy. The paintings are done directly on to the wall plaster and cover a variety of mythical, naturalistic and other themes as well as portraits. One of the finest can be seen in a private house at Pompeii. Known as 'The Three Graces', it depicts three naked women embracing. They are said to personify beauty and joy, and are associated with Venus and the Muses.

No private or public space is complete without its statues. Rome's sculptors have taken over the Greek tradition of carving in marble and made it their own. Their abilities in bronze are unsurpassed in the ancient world, with fine detail, such as fingernails, veins and even hairs, picked out on the most prestigious statues.

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