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Ovid and the Epic Tradition: The Post‐Augustans

Micaela Janan

in Reflections in a Serpent's Eye: Thebes in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Ovid's epic response to Vergil gives body to what the Aeneid already shadows forth: the intractable paradoxes undermining epic dreams of a harmonious, organically united polity. But the intertextual ... More

Ovid's epic response to Vergil gives body to what the Aeneid already shadows forth: the intractable paradoxes undermining epic dreams of a harmonious, organically united polity. But the intertextual conversation among Latin epics did not stop with the Metamorphoses. This chapter examines briefly how Ovid crucially and fundamentally shaped his epic successors' civic visions, sketching the parameters of generic re‐vision from Lucan to Silius Italicus. The intrafamilial civil war regularly dramatized by Vergil's successors moulds their epic cities around political desperation and gendered conflict. Vergil shaped the beginnings of the urbs aeterna into a providential narrative whose logical telos was Augustan Rome, bequeathing to later epic intense engagement with the nature and limitations of the polity. But Ovid shared that engagement; what the post‐Augustan epicists read in Vergil they read in part through the lens Ovid had provided them. His Thebes particularizes just how the providential city comes to grief.Less

The Pantomime Dancer and his Libretto

John Jory

in New Directions in Ancient Pantomime

The poets Statius and Lucan are both said to have written pantomimes, and this chapter considers the relationship of pantomime art to poetic texts. The chapter underlines the importance of the ... More

The poets Statius and Lucan are both said to have written pantomimes, and this chapter considers the relationship of pantomime art to poetic texts. The chapter underlines the importance of the enunciated narrative to the performance. The chapter considers a wide range of evidence about the libretti of pantomime, from disparaging comments on the quality of the words composed specifically for the pantomime dancer, to the alleged small fragments embedded in authors including Petronius. The chapter considers the possible reasons for the apparent wholesale loss of the words which accompanied pantomime, and discusses what sort of poetry and verse forms would have been most suitable; in adapting the text for a tragedy, for example, monologue would have proved much more practicable than stichomythia. The performance evidence relating to Bathyllus and Pylades, the pantomime dancers credited with introducing the art form in the reign of Augustus, is given detailed attention.Less

The Aesthetic Turn: Latin Poetry and Aesthetic Criticism

Charles Martindale

in Latin Poetry and the Judgement of Taste: An Essay in Aesthetics

This chapter asks what an aesthetic criticism of Latin poetry in the 21st century may look like. There is a strong body of aesthetic criticism in English, which, while from a Kantian perspective ... More

This chapter asks what an aesthetic criticism of Latin poetry in the 21st century may look like. There is a strong body of aesthetic criticism in English, which, while from a Kantian perspective should not be regarded as an object of imitation, can be construed as exemplary. For both theory and practice, the chapter turns to Pater whose writings sought to isolate the ‘virtue’, the unique aesthetic character of artworks. It offers three short essays in this mode (on Lucretius, Ovid, and Lucan), for which nothing is claimed except that they are gestures towards a revised practice. These authors have been chosen as offering the reader the experience of a unique kind of beauty that he or she will find nowhere else. For instance, the virtue of Lucretius is located in his combined love of things, words, and ideas, and an imaginatively realized vision of the universe grounded in nature and reason.Less

The Hendecasyllable: An Abbreviated History

Llewelyn Morgan

in Musa Pedestris: Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse

This chapter investigates the ethos embodied by the hendecasyllable, a favourite metre of the Flavian authors Statius and Martial. Starting from one of Statius' most ambitious hendecasyllabic poems, ... More

This chapter investigates the ethos embodied by the hendecasyllable, a favourite metre of the Flavian authors Statius and Martial. Starting from one of Statius' most ambitious hendecasyllabic poems, Silvae 4.3 on the Via Domitiana, it shows that the hendecasyllable was perceived to embody the character of its most celebrated exponent, Catullus, and that the account of the Via Domitiana comes vividly to life when the Catullan quality imparted by the metre is allowed to assert itself. Other aspects of the metre are then considered, especially the polar relationship operative between it and the dactylic hexameter, and its particular aptness for poetic accounts of diminutive topics. Suggestions are made about the character of the metre as it had been encountered by Catullus. These insights are then fed back into a concluding analysis of the metrical dimension of another arresting deployment of hendecasyllables by Statius, the celebration-cum-lament on Lucan's birthday at Silvae 2.7.Less

Exordium

Ben Tipping

in Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica

Silius Italicus' Punica should be the example of Roman epic, glorifying hard-won victory over an external enemy at the height of the republic, between the legendary beginnings that Virgil traces in ... More

Silius Italicus' Punica should be the example of Roman epic, glorifying hard-won victory over an external enemy at the height of the republic, between the legendary beginnings that Virgil traces in the Aeneid and the decline into civil war that Lucan laments in the De bello civili. Yet even now, as ongoing antipathy to positivist aesthetics facilitates re-evaluation of potential subject matter for monographs, classicists are less familiar with the Punica itself than with the sort of faint praise or outright condemnation that has, since antiquity, characterized literary-critical response to Silius' poem. This chapter shows how Silius' epic merits close attention both per se and for its rich interrelationships with other works, especially its main generic paradigms, Virgil's Aeneid and Lucan's De bello civili.Less

Scipio Africanus Maior

Ben Tipping

in Exemplary Epic: Silius Italicus' Punica

This chapter explores the character Scipio in Silius' Punica. The Punica ends with a triumph, and triumph is strongly closural. Yet by echoing Lucan's De bello civili, Silius points to the way in ... More

This chapter explores the character Scipio in Silius' Punica. The Punica ends with a triumph, and triumph is strongly closural. Yet by echoing Lucan's De bello civili, Silius points to the way in which the figure of Africanus is himself unclosed, the stuff of epic representation and its reception. There is a further Lucanian dimension to the undermined closure of the Punica. With the final, apostrophizing couplet of the poem, the narrator places himself among the citizens who watch Scipio's triumph. Participation in his own narrative here places him at a particular point in history, as if certain events, including, of course, Scipio's political downfall, were part of a future still to come.Less

Discordia Fratrum: Aspects of Lucan's Conception of Civil War

Elaine Fantham

in Citizens of Discord: Rome and Its Civil Wars

This chapter looks at Lucan's historical epic, a representation of the civil wars of the Late Republic from a time decades into the imperial period, arguing that the perpetual conflict of Rome's ... More

This chapter looks at Lucan's historical epic, a representation of the civil wars of the Late Republic from a time decades into the imperial period, arguing that the perpetual conflict of Rome's civil wars becomes a kind of elemental force in Lucan's poem. The appropriate image is not a repeating series but rather a contagious disease: discordia spreads to infect everything from the soldiers on the field of battle to soil of Thessaly to the weather and the cosmos itself. To add this dimension to the narrative Lucan blended the Lucretian inheritance of scientific poetry and his own training in Stoic philosophy into the traditional substrate of historical narrative and epic style.Less

Atheism under Cover: Esoteric Communication on Hume's Title Pages

Paul Russell

in The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion

Both the epigrams that Hume uses on the title‐pages of the Treatise of Human Nature are very significant and reveal his freethinking and irreligious aims and intentions.. More specifically, the ... More

Both the epigrams that Hume uses on the title‐pages of the Treatise of Human Nature are very significant and reveal his freethinking and irreligious aims and intentions.. More specifically, the epigram from Tacitus that appears in Books I and II was used not only by Spinoza, but also by his followers in the Collins‐Toland circle to proclaim their bold defense of freethinking. At the same time, the Lucan epigram that appears in Book III also appears prominently in Collins's Freethinking and carries the message of Cato, a model of stoic virtue and the oracle of pantheism, freedom of thought, and anti‐superstition. Beyond this, these two epigrams are also intimately connected with Hume's Hobbist title and plan for his Treatise. In this way, Hume's use of epigrams on the title page of the Treatise is a notable and illuminating example of “esoteric” communication.Less

Conclusions

in The Commerce of War: Exchange and Social Order in Latin Epic

This chapter briefly summarizes the results with reference to contemporary work on exchange and human evolution. Devolution to an economy of thoroughly independent Roman households is the best ... More

This chapter briefly summarizes the results with reference to contemporary work on exchange and human evolution. Devolution to an economy of thoroughly independent Roman households is the best solution Lucan can find to the failed reciprocity of the Republic. The Golden Age imagery Vergil associates with Augustus implies that he may have believed the princeps could restore the republican socioeconomic system. Statius implicitly and intuitively furthers the claim of the Hellenistic philosophical schools that human beings can attain self-sufficiency with his vision of pietas and clementia fully realized by individuals. Vergil endows his epic with greater moralism than does Homer by privileging reciprocity; Lucan expresses frustration at the failure of the republican socioeconomic system and searches for political alternatives. Like Vergil and Lucan, Statius uses epic to represent socioeconomic affairs in crisis.Less

The Idea of Africa in Lucan

Paolo Asso

in African Athena: New Agendas

Africa in Lucan embraces not only the familiar geographical concept but also the complex historical and literary‐historical associations with the memories of the wars against Hannibal and Jugurtha. ... More

Africa in Lucan embraces not only the familiar geographical concept but also the complex historical and literary‐historical associations with the memories of the wars against Hannibal and Jugurtha. Far from being a mere repertoire of historical memory that recalls the glories of past conquest, along with the aggrandizing victories of such prominent players as Scipio Africanus and Marius, Africa in Lucan is praised also for her own qualities, for her wealth of crops and precious timber, and for her strong inhabitants, rough men able to endure tough weather and the most strenuous combat. In exposing Africa's complexity and embedded contradictions as a continent, a Roman province, and a hypostasis of Mother Earth, Lucan not only unveils the Roman ethnic biases, but on geographic and geo‐political bases also questions the concept itself of Roman identity through his poetics of civil war.Less

Augustan Translation of Silver Latin

Robin Sowerby

in The Augustan Art of Poetry: Augustan Translation of the Classics

This chapter examines the effect that the English Augustan aesthetic — embodied in the example of the Roman Augustan Virgil — had on the translation those silver Latin poets who reacted against the ... More

This chapter examines the effect that the English Augustan aesthetic — embodied in the example of the Roman Augustan Virgil — had on the translation those silver Latin poets who reacted against the artistic ideals of the Roman Augustans. All the various translations examined — Dryden's Persius and Juvenal, Rowe's Lucan and Pope's Statius, all Latin poets of the silver age — are shown to embody the hard won Augustan virtues of clearness, purity, and ease that are the hallmarks of the Augustan achievement of Dryden's language and style. The strength and limitations of Rowe's Lucan, hailed by Dr Johnson as one of the greatest productions of English poetry, are brought out in a comparison with Marlowe's earlier version. Pope's vigorous version of Statius, it is argued, proved to be a promising apprenticeship for the translation of Homer.Less

Arator

ROGER P. H. GREEN

in Latin Epics of the New Testament: Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator

Arator's epic was recited by him in April 544 on the steps of a church in Rome: a minute of the ceremony of presenting his work to the Pope still exists. It is a triumphalist poem in what was a ... More

Arator's epic was recited by him in April 544 on the steps of a church in Rome: a minute of the ceremony of presenting his work to the Pope still exists. It is a triumphalist poem in what was a short-lived respite from Gothic attacks, and Arator himself had just a few years earlier fled to Rome from the Gothic-dominated city of Ravenna, where his career had begun. His theme is the Acts of the Apostles; from the New Testament account he selects episodes for poetic elaboration in his own mannered but recognisably epic style (Lucan, it emerges, is a particular favourite), and with an eye to speeches that he can reconfigure as powerful and vivid homilies. His colourful finale, in which Peter and Paul join forces in Rome, is particularly effective.Less

Petrarch’s Lucan and the Africa

Matthew Leigh

in Classical Constructions: Papers in Memory of Don Fowler, Classicist and Epicurean

The Africa is Petrarch’s epic on the Second Punic War and the glorious career of Scipio Africanus Maior. The very rumour of its composition was enough to gain for the poet the laurel crown bestowed ... More

The Africa is Petrarch’s epic on the Second Punic War and the glorious career of Scipio Africanus Maior. The very rumour of its composition was enough to gain for the poet the laurel crown bestowed on him by the city of Rome in 1341; but the poem itself, jealously guarded by its author, and perhaps finally abandoned as incapable of completion, was still unpublished and massively lacunose at the time of his death in 1374. The work finally crept into publication in the 1390s, an inert curio as disregarded by the subsequent centuries as the Rime sparse were adored. Scholarship, in turn, is limited. A major critical edition of the poem was produced by Festa in 1926, and was the subject of a detailed review by Fraenkel, but subsequent criticism has been scant. Even the greatest students of Petrarch, for all that they cite certain parts of the Africa as witness to one stage in the development of his thought, appear to content themselves with reference to specific key passages in the poem. This chapter attempts to make good some of what is lost in the process. The key to this investigation is the presence of Lucan.Less

Introduction: ‘An Author of Commanding Altitude’

Edward Paleit

in War, Liberty, and Caesar: Responses to Lucan's Bellum Ciuile, ca. 1580 - 1650

Starting with an examination of two readings of Lucan in the hitherto little-known play Cinthias Revenge (1613), by the English lawyer and satirist John Stephens, the introduction argues that Lucan’s ... More

Starting with an examination of two readings of Lucan in the hitherto little-known play Cinthias Revenge (1613), by the English lawyer and satirist John Stephens, the introduction argues that Lucan’s sharp rise in popularity during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the equally pronounced revival of interest in the Bellum Ciuile amongst classics and English scholars over the last thirty years, makes a study of Lucan’s Renaissance reception timely and topical. Drawing on the ‘sociology of reading practices’ outlined by Renaissance scholars such as Anthony Grafton, Lisa Jardine, William Sherman and others, it argues that firstly responses to Lucan must be situated in relation to the reading habits and assumptions of their time, rather than read through modern accounts of his text (especially those structured teleologically around ideas like the epic tradition); but that it is also necessary to recognize the specific dynamics of individual engagements within a narrative of historical conflict and change. It stresses the importance of political experience and structures of feeling alongside political ideology for understanding Lucan’s reception.Less

Introduction

in The Commerce of War: Exchange and Social Order in Latin Epic

This book presents an argument that Vergil's Aeneid, Lucan's Civil War, and Statius' Thebaid represent complex and distinctive responses to the socioeconomic mores of each poet's day. The distinction ... More

This book presents an argument that Vergil's Aeneid, Lucan's Civil War, and Statius' Thebaid represent complex and distinctive responses to the socioeconomic mores of each poet's day. The distinction between reciprocal and commodity exchanges was basic to Roman society. In the Aeneid, Civil War, and Thebaid, commodity expressions for punishment resonate with other commodity language. The book also reviews the socioeconomic landscape of each poem, and then explores how the poets use economic language metaphorically to give insights into the thoughts and dispositions of their central characters. Additionally, it argues that the Aeneid shows Vergil longing for the late republican economic system; that Lucan voices skepticism of republican socioeconomic values and tentatively advocates the return to an earlier Roman order; and that Statius turns away from reflection upon a sociopolitical system to express concern for the perils of excessive individual desires.Less

Reciprocity Exposed

in The Commerce of War: Exchange and Social Order in Latin Epic

This chapter presents an overview of economic morality in Civil War, and also describes the three central characters: Caesar, Pompey, and Cato. Civil War lacks any transaction that even approaches ... More

This chapter presents an overview of economic morality in Civil War, and also describes the three central characters: Caesar, Pompey, and Cato. Civil War lacks any transaction that even approaches the apparent ordinariness of Dido's land purchase, and its relative scarcity of reciprocal exchange, even in its distorted forms, is balanced by a corresponding abundance of commodity exchange. The economic language of Lucan's dedication presents Nero as an oddly passive product of the shortsighted and self-interested striving that leads to civil war. The narrator of Civil War criticizes destructive trade, but at other points detaches commodity language from mercantile incontinentia for use in quantifying the waste of civil war. Lucan's thought also turns to the archetypal frugal Roman, Cato, as the last hope for recovering social order.Less