The 'Roman revolution' of Augustus owed much of its success to the extent to which change was concealed under the cover of 'restoration of the Republic', and insistence on precedent was emphasized at almost every stage under the early Principate. The social position of literature at Rome, never as fully integrated into the life of the city as it had been at Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries, changed markedly after Actium, when oratory lost its preeminence with its divorce from a genuine political function. Literature became more the property of an elite, as Horace repeatedly emphasizes. Of the major writers of the last generation of the Republic, Cicero, Varro and Catallus had no need of literary patronage; the position of Lucretius and his possible dependence on C. Memmius remains mysterious. In a world where political comment was perilous and profitless and speech-making had no real political function, the development of rhetoric was at once natural and paradoxical.
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