Augustan Rome Research Articles

Sub Aqua : Latona And The Frogs In Ovid, Metamorphoses (6.313–81)

Abstract: After giving birth Latona arrives tired and thirsty in Lycia, but the locals refuse her a drink from their lake, so she turns them into frogs. Critics usually endorse Latona’s justice. This article reexamines the episode to develop a balanced reading and then historicizes that reading in relation to law and Augustus’ aqueduct projects. The conflict between goddess and mortals dramatizes tensions between emperor and citizens with conflicting interests in water. Ovid’s Lycian myth opens new perspectives on these conflicts and, more generally, on the place of law in Augustan Rome.

Horace on Diseases

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, vividly portrayed for us in his works both a picture of contemporary society and the world of his convictions and beliefs. Among the many researched issues in his work, there are some that still need to be addressed. These include references of a medical nature. The purpose of this article is to point out numerous of Horace’s medical references which give clues as to what health problems plagued Augustan Rome in particular.

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

Review: Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment

Review: <i>Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment</i>

Nandini B. Pandey, The Poetics of Power in Augustan Rome. Latin Poetic Responses to Early Imperial Iconography, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2018, XIII, 312 S., ISBN 978-1-108-42265-9 (geb.), £ 75,–

Article Nandini B. Pandey, The Poetics of Power in Augustan Rome. Latin Poetic Responses to Early Imperial Iconography, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2018, XIII, 312 S., ISBN 978-1-108-42265-9 (geb.), £ 75,– was published on November 30, 2021 in the journal Klio (volume 103, issue 2).

THE RETURN OF THE PIPERS: IN SEARCH OF NARRATIVE MODELS FOR THEAITIONOF THEQVINQVATRVS MINVSCVLAE

AbstractThe article argues that the famous story about the strike, exile and return of the Romanaulosplayers, which is recorded in the sixth book of Ovid'sFastiand referred to by other Latin and Greek sources, is based on a narrative model that already existed in Greece in the Archaic period. The study draws parallels between the tale of the pipers and the myth of the return of Hephaestus to Olympus, suggesting that, apart from similar plots, the two stories share many motifs, such as references to themes derived from comedy and satyr drama. Searching for a possible channel of transmission of the story from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome, the study explores the presence of satyric motifs in Etruscan vase-painting and Roman processional rites. It is furthermore emphasized that many of these motifs, which also appeared in lost satyr-plays, are echoed in Augustan poetry.

Review: Roman Architecture and Urbanism: From the Origins to Late Antiquity

Review: <i>Roman Architecture and Urbanism: From the Origins to Late Antiquity</i>

Verba mihi desunt. Elementi di "attrito linguistico" nella costruzione ovidiana della persona exulis

In Tr. 3.14.46, Ovid laments his decrease in Latin knowledge, concluding that he almost unlearned his mother tongue (uerba mihi desunt dedidicique loqui) and in Tr. 5.7b.55-64 he confesses the decline of his language skills caused by disuse. Moreover, he states that he has learned to speak in Getic to the point of having composed a Geticum libellum (Pont. 4.13.17-23). So, in Ovidian exilic poetry we can observe the elegiac representation of 'language attrition', consisting in a gradual decline or loss of language proficiency, in conjunction with long-lasting contact with foreign languages. But the linguistic adeptness emerging in Ibis and generally in the exilic corpus shows no sign of attrition. We can argue that Ovid uses this frame in order to re-elaborate a literary portray of the persona exulis and to intensify the danger of the loss of Latinity in Tomis, and maybe in the cultural life of Augustan Rome.

The Wood Comes to the City: Ancient Trees, Sacred Groves, and the 'Greening' of Early Augustan Rome

The Wood Comes to the City: Ancient Trees, Sacred Groves, and the 'Greening' of Early Augustan Rome

Ovid, the Res Publica, and the ‘Imperial Presidency’: Public Figures and Popular Freedoms in Augustan Rome and America

Abstract How did Romans perceive the changing relationships among leaders, the people, and the public sphere as their commonwealth (res publica) fell under the control of an emperor? This paper examines Ovid’s uses of the Latin adjective publicus, ‘public, common, open’, to explore strands of implicitly ‘republican’ political thought behind his poetic corpus. Ovid first celebrates Augustus’ material benefactions as common goods for private consumption; then dramatises the tragic consequences of arbitrary domination; and finally, from exile, treats the emperor himself as a public property, subject to his people’s spectatorship and sovereignty of judgment. A final section draws on Ovid’s thinking on privacy, publicity, and information access to explore themes related to America’s ‘imperial presidency’, from the Founders’ emphasis on a free press to the recent interplay of secrecy, celebrity, and ‘sunshine’ laws.

Naming June: Cult, Intertextual Competition and Augustan Politics in Ovid's &lt;em&gt;Fasti&lt;/em&gt; 6

The sixth and final book of Ovid’s Fasti begins with an argument over the origin of the name of June. Three goddesses—Juno, Juventas and Concordia—claim to be the source of the name. The whole competition is framed as a repeat of the judgment of Paris, and Ovid finally declines to make a choice. The result of the original judgment of Paris is the Trojan War, a legend inextricably connected to the narrative of Rome’s own foundation. Thus all three claimants for the name rely on the narrative of history brought about—in poetic terms—by the fall of Troy. In refusing to pass judgment, Ovid prevents a second Trojan War and does not take the decisive step that authorizes any of the contending narratives and brings about Augustan Rome. In refusing to settle the origin of June’s name, Ovid stops the calendar from moving on to July and August, the months named for the founders of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Thus, Ovid ends his calendar by calling into question the Augustan future, one that had not yet been written.

The Cultural History of Augustan Rome: Texts, Monuments, and Topography ed. by Matthew P. Loar et al.

Reviewed by: The Cultural History of Augustan Rome: Texts, Monuments, and Topography ed. by Matthew P. Loar et al. Nandini B. Pandey Matthew P. Loar, Sarah C. Murray and Stefano Rebeggiani (eds.). The Cultural History of Augustan Rome: Texts, Monuments, and Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv, 192. $99.99. ISBN 978-1-108-48060-4. Publishers are invited to submit new books to be reviewed to Professor Michael Arnush, 53 Warren Street, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866; email marnush@skidmore.edu. This edited collection, the product of a 2014 conference at Notre Dame's Rome Global Gateway, asks "what the texts in, on, and about the city of Rome tell us about how the ancients thought about, interacted with, and responded to the city during the transition from Republic to Empire" (1). Given the enormity of the topic, this slender volume makes no claim to comprehensive treatment. What it offers, instead, is a high-quality sampling with suggestions for future research (8-9) that will reward anyone interested in responsions between Augustan writing and building. D. S. Levene, in "Monumental Insignificance: The Rhetoric of Roman Topography from Livy's Rome" (chapter 1), identifies conspicuous absences of topographical and monumental detail where we might most expect them in Livy. Levene suggests that the history is "more concerned with giving an impression of a real environment than evoking the actual city of Rome" (20), supplanting the urban environment as a repository of exempla legible to audiences abroad. In "Cicero, quid in alieno saeculo tibi? The 'Republican' Rostra between Caesar and Augustus" (chapter 2), Thomas Biggs compellingly tracks the process by which the Rostra was reimagined as a "pluperfect" "meta-monument" to the lost Republic, thanks to late-Republican physical and performative interventions including the mise-en-scène of Cicero's corpse on a structure bearing Antony's name and Caesar's memory (36). Peter Heslin, in "The Julian Calendar and the Solar Meridian of Augustus: Making Rome Run on Time" (chapter 3), expertly corrects the belief that the obelisk in the Campus Martius was "preordained" to serve as a gnomon within a unified spatial plan "by an all-seeing Augustus" (71). The meridian is better understood as an "afterthought" among ad hoc continuations of Julius Caesar's calendrical reforms, a pharaonic counterpoint to the senatorial Ara Pacis whose conscription into later emperors' building plans has enhanced confusion about the pavement date. Dan-el Padilla Peralta's "Monument Men: Buildings, Inscriptions, and Lexicographers in the Creation of Augustan Rome" (chapter 4) examines the relationship between Augustus' architectural renovation of Rome and the contemporaneous boom in orthography, lexicography, and epigraphy, with special interest in questions of access, antiquarianism, and "how documenting the monument came to involve monumenting the document" (82) within this text-rich environment. In the archaeological first half of chapter 5, "The Porticus Liviae in Ovid's Fasti (6.637-648)," Maddalena Bassani interprets the Porticus Liviae and its shrine to Concordia as a public reclamation of the lavish domus left to Augustus [End Page 357] by Vedius Pollio.1 On the literary side, Francesca Romana Berno analyzes Ovid's response in Fasti 6 as a failed attempt to square criticism of contemporary luxury with praise of "the magnificence of Livia's monuments as testaments to moral sobriety" (116). The Greek ekphrastic epigrams on Myron's Cow have struck many—notably Michael Squire2—as meditations on mimesis itself, not particularly engaged with the statue's spatial context after its likely relocation to Rome among the armenta Myronis that Propertius 2.31 places on the Palatine. In "Greek Poets on the Palatine: A Wild Cow Chase?" (chapter 6), Carolyn MacDonald reads several epigrams against this Augustan landscape as glimpses into an elusive "Greek discourse on the uses and abuses of Greek art in the Caesars' city of marble" (127). Building from the familiar observation that exile splits Ovid into a body that must remain in Tomis and books that may return to Rome, Stephanie Ann Frampton's "Ovid's Two-Body Problem" (chapter 7) analyzes epigraphical intermediality in the exile poetry as part of Ovid's bid to render himself more permanent in the city, notably via Tristia 4...

De sobere stijl van Augustus

Summary This article examines the rhetorical style of Augustus' Res Gestae. Ancient sources, including Suetonius (Life of Augustus 86), describe Augustus' style in terms of elegantia and temperantia. These qualities are indeed characteristic of the style of the emperor's private letters (of which some fragments survive) and the Res Gestae. Augustus' style was influenced by his great uncle Julius Caesar and his Greek teacher of rhetoric Apollodorus of Pergamon. There are striking parallels between the ancient descriptions of Augustus' style and the theories of style in Greek rhetorical treatises of Augustan Rome. In adopting a sober style, Augustus aimed at presenting himself with the authority of a moderate man, who was to be admired throughout the empire.

Diversity in and among Rhetorical Traditions

Diversity in and among Rhetorical Traditions

Building Praise: Augustan Rome and Epideictic

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I examine two epideictic artifacts from the Roman Principate, The Res Gestae Divi Augusti and the summi viri, arguing Augustus used them to reshape the model of a good leader, in part, by emphasizing contributing to the built environment of the city. Additionally, the public and visual nature of these artifacts made them highly accessible to those outside of the Roman elite, who may have sought social mobility through the imperial bureaucracy allowing for more diverse participation in the Roman government. I close by considering the influence of classical exemplars on U.S. civic spaces.

Building Praise: Augustan Rome and Epideictic

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I examine two epideictic artifacts from the Roman Principate, The Res Gestae Divi Augusti and the summi viri, arguing Augustus used them to reshape the model of a good leader, in part, by emphasizing contributing to the built environment of the city. Additionally, the public and visual nature of these artifacts made them highly accessible to those outside of the Roman elite, who may have sought social mobility through the imperial bureaucracy allowing for more diverse participation in the Roman government. I close by considering the influence of classical exemplars on U.S. civic spaces.

An Ovidian Poetics of Exile: Renaissance Crossovers with the &lt;i&gt;Tristia&lt;/i&gt;

This article foregrounds some of the basic principles contained within Ovid’s Tristia, a series of epistles written whilst he was exiled from Augustan Rome in A.D. 8. It seeks to find nuances and reapplications of this long-overlooked work in Renaissance England, and looks at translation practice and poets of the sixteenth century who were indebted to Ovid’s ‘exile poetics’ in their own compositions.

Ovid, Art, and Eros

Ovid, Art, and Eros PAUL BAROLSKY OVIDIO, AMORI, miti e altre storie or Ovid: Loves, Myths, and Other Stories is the copiously illustrated catalogue to the monumental exhibition mounted in 2008–2009 at the Scuderie del Quirinale, in Rome, in celebration of the great Roman poet and his world. This handsome tome is many books in one: a beautiful album of color plates illustrating a wide range of fascinating objects, an overview of Ovid’s life, works and influences—a book for amateurs and specialists alike, a book to delight and instruct . The book includes paintings and sculpture but also pottery, coins, and jewelry. There is something for everybody here. Ovidio is divided into relatively brief sections written by numerous scholars who treat such topics as Ovid and myth, Ovid the love poet, Ovid in exile, Ovid and Augustan Rome, Ovid and the figurative arts, and Ovid in the seventeenth century. The book’s attention to illustrated editions of Metamorphoses, and especially the Ovide moralisé, is notable and refreshing. I think it fair to say that the exhibition and its catalogue are, not surprisingly, dominated by Metamorphoses and the ways in which artists illustrated its stories over the centuries. The myths of Venus and Adonis, Narcissus and Echo, Icarus and Daedalus, and Jupiter and Europa are among the numerous Ovidian stories that get extensive treatment here. We need to recall that no ancient author in the Hellenic tradition is so copiously illustrated as is Ovid—a fact that is Ovidio, amori, miti e altre storie, ed Francesca Ghedini et al. Rome 2018, 310 pages; isbn 9788856906486; €33.15. arion 27.2 fall 2019 easily taken for granted. A consummate story teller, Ovid inspired the pictorial tales of Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velázquez, among other masters. Often in this book, works of mythological art are seen in the context of Ovid, even when there is no specific association between image and text. Such is the case when, for example, we encounter the well-known Praxitelean Aphrodite pudica in the Uffizi which inspired Botticelli’s similar Aphrodite now in the Musei Reali of Turin. There is nothing that links the statue and the painting to Ovid other than the fact that their makers, like the poet, write about the goddess of love. Ever so many mythological works suggest the arousal of desire. The Praxitelean Aphrodite modestly covers her body with both of her hands. Understandably, since according to an ancient tale, a young man was so aroused by the statue that he left a stain upon her. In short, we are in the realm of erotic art. The Hellenistic statue of Leda and the Swan in the archeology museum of Venice is an excellent example of erotic art featured in this book, even though Leda is mentioned only in passing in Metamorphoses. She seems to swoon in rapture as the bird (Jupiter in avian guise) slithers between her legs, beak seeking lips. Scarcely resisting, Leda reaches ambiguously downward as if in search of something, and we can well imagine what that might be. That her lower hand is invisible contributes to its suggestiveness. Leda’s upper hand is pressed against the swan’s sinuous neck, by no means a gesture of resist170 ovid, art, and eros Figure 1: Leda and the Swan. Venice, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 2018. Eric Vandeville / akg-images. ance, I believe, even though in the myth she is taken by force. What we see is what the Ovid catalogue calls a “voluptuous amplexus.” The story of Leda and the Swan is forever told by painters in various erotic ways. When, later in the Renaissance, Correggio pictures the momentous event he shows the swan mounting Leda who, in this case, receives the bird in a seated position. As the bird engages the nymph, feathers pressed against her inner thigh, the swan, as in the ancient statue, seeks out her mouth with his beak—a juxtaposition as phallic as it is oral. The Leonardesque smile of Leda betokens not fear or violence but pleasure—a decidedly carnal pleasure. In a different context, Vasari wrote that Correggio painted not colors but flesh. When Leonardo himself pictured Leda, he delicately rendered the...

Naming June: Cult, Intertextual Competition and Augustan Politics in Ovid’s Fasti 6

The sixth and final book of Ovid’s Fasti begins with an argument over the origin of the name of June. Three goddesses—Juno, Juventas and Concordia—claim to be the source of the name. The whole competition is framed as a repeat of the judgment of Paris, and Ovid finally declines to make a choice. The result of the original judgment of Paris is the Trojan War, a legend inextricably connected to the narrative of Rome’s own foundation. Thus all three claimants for the name rely on the narrative of history brought about—in poetic terms—by the fall of Troy. In refusing to pass judgment, Ovid prevents a second Trojan War and does not take the decisive step that authorizes any of the contending narratives and brings about Augustan Rome. In refusing to settle the origin of June’s name, Ovid stops the calendar from moving on to July and August, the months named for the founders of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Thus, Ovid ends his calendar by calling into question the Augustan future, one that had not yet been written.

On the Presuppositions of Literary Periods

On the Presuppositions of Literary Periods Ralph Cohen and John L. Rowlett (bio) The Problem of Periods As i consider the problem of literary periods, I am reminded of Marianne Moore's statement about poetry: "imaginary gardens with real toads in them."1 Periods are imaginary gardens, but the works that compose them are alive and actual. Literary periods are concepts of literary works that exist in time, and although time does not have a stop, literary periods do. They are concepts ordering literary works, and as critics frequently remark, there are more ways than one to order such works, more ways than one of conceiving of periods. As Francis E. Sparshott says, the vitality of literary historiography "shows itself in two things: that some try to fix periods, and others try to stop them."2 But whether critics try to fix or unfix periods, they rely for their concepts on the knowledge of their own time, and to this extent, periodization is a historical phenomenon. I wish to offer three examples of this taken from writers in three different centuries. Oliver Goldsmith in "An Account of the Augustan Age of England" (1759) took the concept of period to mean the years in which the high point of writing was reached. "Some have looked upon the writers in the times of Queen Elizabeth as the true standard for future imitation; others have descended to the reign of James I, and others still lower, to that of Charles II. Were I to be permitted to offer an opinion upon this subject, I should readily give my vote for the reign of Queen Anne, or some years before that period."3 Goldsmith's view of "period" was not chronologically firm, but the basis for comparing the period with Augustan Rome rested on the quality of writing and the support of patronage. In the nineteenth century, George F. Underhill wrote a book on Literary Epochs: Chapters on Noted Periods of Intellectual Activity (1887) and "laid down the dictum that the individual is the archetype of the nation and the period to which he belongs."4 His procedure was to define the period and then to discover its traits in the authors. It is unnecessary for me to point out that "period" is not an entity, and that writers contribute to the shaping [End Page 113] of periods. The most recent discussion of periods is in an essay by the Hungarian Marxist, István Sötér. He begins with a recognition of the role of the individual in the period. It is from the individual, what he calls "human nature" or "human essence," that a period takes its particular form because human beings are members of a class. From the conflicts, conditions, and relations of and within the class, a literary period takes its themes: "Single periods themselves are not delimited by changes in the literary or ideological currents, but the changes in the 'human essence' and 'human nature' are present in the emergence of literary or ideological currents."5 Sötér is aware of the problem of different themes and movements in a segment of time, but he wishes to preserve a period theory that depends on the acceptance of a class theory, and thus he posits a period as a change in human nature or class relations. But this critic seems unable to demonstrate a direct relation between literary style and class change. These three views seem naive, and my point is that concepts need to take account of a body of data in order to be considered as usable hypotheses. It is therefore necessary to suggest the data involved. I wish to confine myself to literature, and to the literature of England, using as an example of a period the time span 1660–1770. I know that the term period has been applied to the "Renaissance" and to "Romanticism" and that these cross national boundaries. I know, too, that the term has been applied to "Baroque" and "Rococo" entering the domains of art and music as well as literature. But a concept that has produced little usable scholarship had better be examined in its most elementary rather than...