<P> In the 5th and 6th centuries, due to the gradual decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy . However, in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantine Empire, reading continued throughout the Middle Ages as reading was of primary importance as an intrument of the Byzantine civilization . </P> <P> In the traditional literary canon, literature under Augustus, along with that of the late Republic, has been viewed as the "Golden Age" of Latin literature, embodying the classical ideals of "unity of the whole, the proportion of the parts, and the careful articulation of an apparently seamless composition ." The three most influential Classical Latin poets--Vergil, Horace, and Ovid--belong to this period . Vergil wrote the Aeneid, creating a national epic for Rome in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece . Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse . Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of the Augustan moral programme; it was one of the ostensible causes for which the emperor exiled him to Tomis (present - day Constanța, Romania), where he remained to the end of his life . Ovid's Metamorphoses was a continuous poem of fifteen books weaving together Greco - Roman mythology from the creation of the universe to the deification of Julius Caesar . Ovid's versions of Greek myths became one of the primary sources of later classical mythology, and his work was so influential in the Middle Ages that the 12th and 13th centuries have been called the "Age of Ovid ." </P> <P> The principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding and early history became the most familiar version in modern - era literature . Vitruvius's book De Architectura, the only complete work on architecture to survive from antiquity, also belongs to this period . </P> <P> Latin writers were immersed in the Greek literary tradition, and adapted its forms and much of its content, but Romans regarded satire as a genre in which they surpassed the Greeks . Horace wrote verse satires before fashioning himself as an Augustan court poet, and the early Principate also produced the satirists Persius and Juvenal . The poetry of Juvenal offers a lively curmudgeon's perspective on urban society . </P>

How many countries were there in the roman empire