MEDEA: TRANSFORMATIONS OF A GREEK FIGURE IN LATIN LITERATURE

Abstract

Latin writers in the ancient world are well known to have been familiar with earlier Greek writings, as well as with the first commentaries on those, and to have taken over literary genres as well as topics and motifs from Greece for their own works. But, as has been recognized in modern scholarship, this engagement with Greek material does not mean that Roman writers typically produced Latin copies of pieces by their Greek predecessors. In the terms of contemporary literary terminology, the connection between Latin and Greek literature is rather to be described as an intertextual relationship, which became increasingly complex, since later Latin authors were also influenced by their Roman predecessors.