Abstract
These have been good years for Enniusperennis. A couple of years on from his Loeb renewal, two superb books keep the lifeblood pulsing.Ennius’ Annals. Poetry and History, edited by Cynthia Damon and Joseph Farrell, is a masterclass of a conference volume. The lucid introduction, a sort of ‘Whither Ennius?’, powerfully situates it in the receding wake of Otto Skutsch's monumental edition and the fresher waves ofEnnius and the Architecture of the Annals, Jackie Elliott's powerful challenge to ‘Virgiliocentric’ reconstructions of this fragmentary text. As those studies made plain enough in their different ways, reception and interpretation of theAnnalsare interlocked to a special degree, and the fourteen chapters in this book (plus afterword by Mary Jaeger) roam nicely around and between both.
Highlights
Ennius and the Architecture of the Annals, Jackie Elliott’s powerful challenge to ‘Virgiliocentric’ reconstructions of this fragmentary text.3 As those studies made plain enough in their different ways, reception and interpretation of the Annals are interlocked to a special degree, and the fourteen chapters in this book roam nicely around and between both
Nethercut develops a rich version of the familiar observation that, in describing Homer’s topic as rerum natura (1.126), Lucretius constructs the epic tradition in his own image
A twinge of disappointment here [49,50,51], as we slip into some stretched intertextual claims: when Epicurus ‘dares to lift his eyes’ against religion (1.66–7), Lucretius is comparing him to Hector, not daring to look Ajax in the eyes at Iliad 17.176–7; since Graius homo recalls the Pyrrhus of Ennius (Ann. 165 Sk.), Lucretius is complicatedly figuring Epicurus as Greek and Trojan at once – a tall story on a shallow foundation
Summary
Ennius and the Architecture of the Annals, Jackie Elliott’s powerful challenge to ‘Virgiliocentric’ reconstructions of this fragmentary text.3 As those studies made plain enough in their different ways, reception and interpretation of the Annals are interlocked to a special degree, and the fourteen chapters in this book (plus afterword by Mary Jaeger) roam nicely around and between both.
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