Latin Epigrams Research Articles

Enlivening Wit

The birth of such innovative newspapers as The Tatler and The Spectator enables the readers to observe and join the public debate through a new intellectual lens. The use of Latin epigrams opening every issue of The Spectator emphasizes not only the close interest in classical literature and culture, but also the communicative strategy focused on the celebration of wit through the moral paradigms of ancient Roman poets, at a time of the rise of modern public opinion. The poetical and rhetorical choices of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, along with other Latin poetry enthusiasts such as Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, bitingly denounce social hypocrisies and contradictions through parody and mockery. Their purpose was to rebut conventional behavior through the permeating force of Enlightenment wit inspired by cleverness, satire and sarcasm.

Neglected Witnesses to George Herbert's Musæ Responsoriæ, and a Previously Unpublished Poem, "Wren cum Chirothecis"

This article considers three manuscript witnesses to the Musæ Responsoriæ, George Herbert's answer to Andrew Melville's polemical poem Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria. None of these, two of them complete copies, was known to Herbert's first modern editor, F. E. Hutchinson, nor are they mentioned in any of the several subsequent editions of Herbert's Latin verse, all of which follow Hutchinson's sole source, the 1662 Ecclesiastes Solomonis of James Duport. In addition to providing descriptions of their contents and provenance, we survey the substantive variants and accidentals pertaining to the two complete copies and argue why one in particular will supplant Duport as copy-text for the new edition of Herbert's works currently in progress for Oxford University Press. Our essay also presents a hitherto unknown Latin epigram that appears in the other complete copy and considers evidence for attributing the poem to the author of The Temple.

Enjambement am Pentameterende

Abstract This paper traces the enjambment techniques employed by Hellenistic and Latin authors at the end of the elegiac couplet. While the Alexandrians make deliberate use of enjambment at the end of the pentameter, in later Hellenistic and in Latin epigram there is a discernible movement toward a unity of syntax and metre, as testified by the poets’ tendency to avoid enjambment between distichs. The earliest Latin epigrammatists loyally render their Greek contemporaries’ aesthetics. Catullus, in his turn to Callimachean poetics, at times employs enjambment in this position, especially in elegy (as opposed to epigram). These techniques are largely abandoned by the Augustan poets, who rigidly introduce epigrammatic avoidance of enjambment into longer elegiac poems; among them, only Propertius in his fourth book rarely uses it as a stylistic means.

Niewydane tłumaczenie epigramów Sarbiewskiego, czyli uwagi o działalności przekładowej prof. Zofii Abramowiczówny

The paper describes a Polish translation of M. K. Sarbiewski’s Latin epigrams made by Zofia Abramowicz (1906–1988) during the interwar period. These epigrams (partially preserved) were prepared to be published in 1939 or 1940 by Prof. Ryszard Ganszyniec in his „Filomata” Press. Abramowicz’s translational work seems to be a part of history of the classical philology in Poland.

Greek and Latin epigram on medicine and health

A small book published under this title with a circulation of 1000 copies. remarkable in many ways. It contains poetic works of ancient authors on medical topics.

Robortello nei Foricoenia e negli Elegiarum Libri Quattuor di Jan Kochanowski

This article aims to study Jan Kochanowski’s Foricoenia and Elegiarum Libri Quattuor in the light of Francesco Robortello’s treatise Eorum omnium quae ad methodum et artificium scribendi epigrammatis spectant explicatio. After having set Robortello’s treatise in its historical and literary context, the article shows how Jan Kochanowski, who probably attended Robortello’s classes during his first two stays in Padua (1552-1555; 1556-1557), agreed with the ideas presented in the treatise. The fact that Kochanowski agrees with his professor’s ideas on the epigram does not mean that he behaves in a totally passive and uncritical way, for he clearly shows his independence when writing his Latin epigrams, sometimes refusing to comply with Robortello’s suggestions (e.g., Kochanowski does not avoid the use of elegant and rare Graecisms, which Robortello advises against excessively using). Kochanowski owes Robortello his high consideration for Catullus: when imitating Catullus’s epigrams, Kochanowski often chooses to imitate (or to hint at) the same epigrams Robortello commends in his treatises (for instance, Cat. LXIX is clearly imitated in Foricoenia XXV, while Cat. XV is quoted in elegy I 7). We encounter the same situation when Kochanowski deals with Martial: although Robortello clearly prefers Catullus over Martial, he praises the love epigrams written by the latter poet, and Kochanowski, in writing his foricoenium CV, imitates Cat. XCIX as well as Mart. III 65 and XI 8, the latter two epigrams not quoted explicitly by Robortello, but chosen by Kochanowski himself.

Rovásírással – latinul

The Hungarian Runic script (or, according to another terminology, Szekler script), rarely used in the 10th–14th centuries, had got some popularity in the era of the Renaissance. There are a few examples, where the letters, originally devised for the Hungarian language, were combined with or used for Latin words. Thus the author of the Sepsikilyén wall graffito wrote X ʃcribʃit ◦ ← BNDK2 I[[L]]` Ly´ ES, that is Benedek Illyés scripsit; probably there is another hic fuit-graffito in Berekeresztúr from 1581, written partly in Runic script. The most prominent example is István Szamosközy’s Latin epigram from 1604, a pasquin against Emperor and King Rudolph, where Runic script was used as kind of a cryptography, the author had to set several orthographic rules for the Latin language in Runes and partially accommodated the graphotactics to the Latin custom too.

A Companion to Ancient Epigram by Christer Henriksén

198 PHOENIX that involve giants, and the author combines his preferred methods and interpretative interests (intertextuality, narratology, geopoetics, metapoetics, etc.) with great aplomb. Amongst other things, he argues that in the PH comparisons and similes involving giants are confined to the characterization of heroes and heroines of the older generation, and that they often highlight narrative turning points. An example of this phenomenon is the Aloadae simile at PH 1.515–522, which is intertextually indebted to Il. 5.385–391 and which, through the association of the Aloadae with Mount Pelion, serves to equate Achilles (whose parents got married at the same place, and whose famous ash-spear was made from wood therefrom) with a hybrid giant. Hence this simile “contributes to the reinforcement of Achilles’ ambivalence” (“trägt zur Verstärkung der Ambivalenz des Achilleus bei,” 206). This chapter offers many fine and detailed close readings of several passages from the PH, and it is a significant contribution to the study of the PH for two reasons: first, it considerably advances our understanding of how Quintus uses comparisons and similes, and secondly, it also provides us with new insights into the Hesiodic side of the PH. No scholar has ever looked systematically at the “Hesiodicity” of this epic, although the famous sphragis at PH 12.306–313 acknowledges Hesiod as an intertextual model on an equal footing with Homer. Thus Bärtschi’s chapter constitutes an important step towards such as study—a study that still needs to be written. Bärtschi writes for the most part in a clear and lucid academic style, and the book has been well copy-edited; only a handful of typos remain. The same generally positive verdict goes for the translations of the Greek text passages discussed; I only noticed occasional minor infelicities (e.g., ken . . . Änajen at Hes. Theog. 837: this aorist is ingressive, thus it should have been translated as “hätte die Herrschaft errungen” [vel sim.], not as “hätte geherrscht,” 50). To summarize, this is an excellent study with a clear focus, a high level of methodological reflection and philological accuracy, rigorous close readings of text passages, and plausible results. Therefore it deserves a broad, international readership. For those who like conclusions with puns, one could say: the author’s efforts were gigantic, and the outcome is epic. University of Oslo Silvio BÈ ar A Companion to Ancient Epigram. Edited by Christer Henriks en. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World). 2019. Pp. 736. The aim of this edited volume is to provide a comprehensive overview of Greek and Latin epigram, from its inscriptional beginnings to the end of antiquity, as well as of the genre’s reception in Byzantium and in the Western literary tradition. The task is formidable, since epigram not only has the longest history of all Western literary genres, but is also a poetic form which can accommodate a stupendous variety of voices, sentiments, registers, and topics—from the sigh of a despondent lover to the tribute to a defiant act of heroism that resounds in eternity. Furthermore, ever since the first Greek inscriptional epigrams were compiled into single- or multi-author book collections (such as the elusive Sylloge Simonidea and Philochorus’ Attic Epigrams), the epigram has led a double life, as a literary form which invites sequential reading, and as an inscription on an object which demands to be interpreted in its material context and, in some cases, in the context of other epigrams on the same object or in the vicinity. The genre poses some of the most complex and vigorously discussed questions in classics: the origins of literacy, BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 199 the early impact of Homeric epics, the role of the inscribed text in ritual performance, the modes of reading and viewing, the relationship of performative and book poetry, the materiality of text, the origin and composition of the poetic book, the status of the author, and the evolution of the poetic “I,” among many others. To further complicate the picture, the study of epigram is constantly reinvigorated by sensational papyrological discoveries and the steady publication of new poems on stone. Hardly any other field in...

A Feast Fit for a Eunuch: Hipponax Frs. 26, 26a, and Martial 3.77

This paper reexamines Hipponax frs. 26 and 26a West, arguing that the lines describe the fortunes of a cunnilinctor, a reading which I contextualize within the sexual vocabulary of Iambus, Old Comedy, and Latin epigram. I then argue that Martial 3.77 might have been directly modeled on the Hipponax poem as herein reconstructed.

Poezja religijna w kręgu mnichów Zakonu Grobu Bożego w Polsce – Gemmae sacrosanctae crucis Jakuba Pawła Radlińskiego

Jakub Paweł Radliński was a General of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Miechow between 1744-1765. In 1755 he published in Krakow a religious book Gemmae Sacrosanctae Crucis Nostri Domini Jesu Christi (Jewels of the Sacred Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ). It is a collection of nearly 150 Latin epigrams preceded by lemmas. The work consists of two parts. In the first section the author develops themes and symbols (figurae) drawn from Scripture, both from the Old, and from the New Testament. The second part contains predictions (prophetiae) on St. Cross. The poems are related to emblems, which were popular in the first half of the eighteenth century. Radliński’s Latin book is worth reminding because of its religious and literary values.

A Verse Translation of More’s Latin Epigrams into English

A Verse Translation of More’s Latin Epigrams into English

“Blest pair of Sirens … Voice and Verse”: Milton’s Rhetoric of Song

“Blest pair of Sirens … Voice and Verse”:Milton’s Rhetoric of Song Katherine R. Larson In his three Latin epigrams penned in commendation of the singer Leonora Baroni, Milton marvels at the power and beauty of the soprano voice. Leonora is, he writes, a “liquid-voiced Siren” (liquidam Sirena) who “lays the spell of her song upon both men and gods” (Atque homines cantu detinet atque Deos).1 The sound of her voice is such that Milton can only conclude that God must be present within it or, if not God, an angelic spirit who “is moving mysteriously in [her] throat” (Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens) as Leonora ravishes her hearers (“Ad Leonoram,” 6). These poems constitute only one moment among many in Milton’s writings that attest to the affective potency of song. In Il Penseroso, Milton’s speaker imagines himself “Dissolve[d] … into ecstasies” (164) by “full voic’d” (162) anthems. In Of Education, he commends song for its ability “to smooth [dispositions and manners] and make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered passions” (638). And in Ad Patrem, Milton credits Orpheus’s song, not the music of his lute, for his ability to captivate the natural world (84). However, while Milton’s epigrams to Leonora likewise tap into popular early modern discourses linking song and rhetoric, these [End Page 81] poems also stand out for their attention to Leonora’s performance and the physiology of her singing body, as she “breath[es] peace into [the] diseased breast[s]” (aegro spirans sub corde quietem) of her hearers with her “heart-stirring song” (Flexanimo cantu) (“Ad eandem [1],” 11–12). In so doing, they invite us to attend to song as an acoustic, embodied, and gendered rhetorical practice in Milton’s writings. Although scholars have long been attuned to the centrality of music and song in Milton’s texts, most work in the area has concentrated on the sonority of Milton’s prosody—the “musical delight” of his “apt Numbers” and “fit quantity of Syllables” (PL, “The Verse,” p. 210)—rather than treating song as an embodied affective musical phenomenon. Even the most musically focused studies, notably by Diane McColley, Louise Schleiner, and Judy van Sickle, dwell primarily on the musical influences that shaped Milton’s treatment of song, probing, in van Sickle’s words, “how songs become embedded in the rich texture of Milton’s language.”2 Such interventions have greatly enriched our understanding of musical-textual relations in Milton’s writings and have helped to elucidate his close engagement with early modern musical discourses and his dexterous appropriation of vocal genres and musical modes. Joseph Ortiz and Erin Minear have helped to shift these debates in a new direction by highlighting the implications of reading Miltonic music as sensuous, reverberating sound.3 More work needs to be done, however, in order fully to appreciate the significance of the materiality and acoustic impact of song as performance in Milton’s writings. This critical imbalance is reflective of broader patterns within early modern studies. We experience songs from the period not only as readers, but also as audience members and, in some cases, as singers. Yet literary scholarship on song is weighted toward what Leslie Dunn and Nancy A. Jones call its “verbal and textual dimensions.”4 When a critic encounters a song in a sonnet sequence, romance, and even a masque or play, the tendency is to engage with it as poem rather than as musical performance. Musicologists likewise too often overlook the sonic and visual facets of early [End Page 82] modern vocal repertoire in favor of the abstract musical work and the notational framework of its score. Such patterns can in part be attributed to disciplinary trends and modes of training that can hinder a full integration of historically situated textual, musical, and performance analysis. Less tangible, but no less significant, methodological challenges arise from the transience of live performance (accentuated further in the case of early modern songs by a temporal distancing of nearly four centuries), as well as from the emotional transcendence prompted by the experience of a musical event. In an influential essay, musicologist Carolyn Abbate confronts this issue by elucidating...

“Spencerus isthic conditur”: Kenelm Digby’s Transcription of William Alabaster

Kenelm Digby, perhaps the most signifcant early critic of The Faerie Queene, copied a four-line Latin epigram by William Alabaster onto the fyleaf of his own copy of Spenser’s work. In this article I place his decision to do so in context, and suggest that Digby’s choice of these verses may have been informed by his uncertainty surrounding his own confessional identity. Alabaster had converted to Catholicism in 1597, before rejoining the English church in 1611: Digby, born into a disgraced Catholic family, sought to understand his own religious allegiance in the late 1620s, and his reading of Spenser and broader engagement with Renaissance romance was one dimension of this attempt. I therefore suggest that a surprising strand of the aferlife of Spenser’s poem was located amidst the complications of English Catholic conversion and reconversion.

Maturam frugem flore manente ferens: pochwała starości w poezjach Auzoniusza

Decimus Ausonius Magnus (ca 310-394) was a rhetorician, a teacher, a tutor of young Gratian and a highly-ranked, influential official, as well as one of the most famous poets of the late Roman Empire. In his poems, he frequently described the small world he belonged to, the daily routine of his own, of his relatives, professional colleagues and friends. As the poet reached his old age, he made it a subject of his poetry. Ausonius considers old age to be a blessing, a time which permits a wise, generous person to gather fruit of his good deeds and fulfilled duties, to watch children and grandchildren grow and achieve successes, to share one’s wisdom with younger persons. Ausonius shows his grandfather and his grand­mother, his aunts, but first of all his father, Ausonius senior, as the examples of happy old persons, loving and loved, respected and needed by the people who surrounded them. He notices that old persons can be joyful, healthy and beautiful. Writing about old age, he mentions illness only once, while expressing his joy of having recovered and being able to send greetings to the grandson who celebrates his birthday. In spite of his age, Ausonius still loves his wife Sabina, who died many years before, the same way as he loved her when he was a young husband. He is deeply attached to Bissula, the charming German girl cap­tured and given to him by the Emperor Valentinian I probably circa 368. Besides, he really enjoys spending time with his friends and with the Muses. In his epigrams, most of which don’t have personal, but rather literary character, the poet translates, quotes, paraphrases and imitates Greek and Latin epigrams which deal with the theme of old age. Although in Ausonius’ poems exists an obvious resemblance to their models, he grants himself much freedom in his remouldings. Not only he alters circumstantial details, expands or abbrevi­ates the original, bur also uses them as mere starting points of his reflexion. It becomes more important for him to ponder over quickly passing youth or over a lover’s feelings towards a woman who rejected him when she was young, but whom he still admires, than to play a literary game. Ausonius never parodies nor even portrays women trying to attire men in their old age, even though he may mock old men pretending to look younger than they are. Neither he complains about pains and sorrows of old age. In all that, he remains a true Roman and a true gentleman.

Thomas More’s Latin Epigrams Translated Anew

More's Latin epigrams, which include his Latin translations of poems from the Greek Anthology, his adaptations of other authors such as Theophrastus, and his own poems in Latin, were celebrated for their wit, humor, and erudition. They are also a good guide to More's own taste in irony, satire, and philosophy, ranging from philosophical acceptance of the inevitability of death to satire of the ignorance of astrologers, the pomposity of kings, and the tendency of portrait painters to idealize their subjects. Susan McLean, in her poetic translations of More's epigrams, tries to convey their balance and contrast, metrical elegance, urbane wit, and comic deflation.

“Leisure to Make Rhymes”: St. Thomas More as English Poet

Part One SCHOLAR, LAWYER, HUMANIST, WIT, Lord Chancellor for Henry VIII, martyr and canonized saint, Thomas More was also probably the most prolific writer of English literature in the early Tudor period, as the now completed Yale Edition of his writings attests. (1) His reputation as an author has of course been chiefly associated with his Latin masterpiece, Utopia (1516), (2) one of the seminal works of the Western literary tradition, which has provided both name and model for the numerous ideal commonwealths that have been imagined, and on occasion attempted in practice, from that day up to the present. His History of King Richard III, (3) written (c. 1514) in both English and Latin versions in order to reach More's two principal audiences of fellow countrymen and continental humanists, marks the beginning of modern historical writing in England; though unfinished and unpublished in More's lifetime, it found its way into the sixteenth-century chronicles and served as the principal source for Shakespeare's play. More's early classical studies resulted not only in his Latin epigrams, many translated from Greek originals, but in the translations undertaken with Erasmus of some works of Lucian, (4) the master of Greek dialogue who proved to be fruitful stimulus for the original work of both great humanists, in particular for the Utopia and for Erasmus's Encomium Moriae (The Praise of Folly), (5) the title of which is punning tribute to his friend. Much of the literary activity of More's mature years, which were largely absorbed by affairs of state, was concerned with the controversies of the early Reformation, beginning with his Latin Responsio (1523) to Martin Luther's attacks on Henry VIII's treatise on the sacraments. (6) The best of this work is certainly the first written in English, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529; 1531), (7) in which More employs his favorite literary form to discredit the religious innovations entering England from the continent. Described by C. S. Lewis as perhaps the best specimen of Platonic dialogue ever produced in English, (8) this work was followed in rapid succession by series of polemical works in which the literary dimension is less in evidence: The Supplication of Souls (1529); The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer (1532; 1533), massive two-part sequel to the Dialogue; The Apology of Sir Thomas More, Knight (1532); The Debellation of Salem and Bizance (1532); The Answer to Poisoned Book (1533). (9) A more meditative focus, which had already shown itself in the materials translated and adapted as The Life of Pico (c. 1505) and in the unfinished meditation on the Last Things (c. 1522), (10) was given greater opportunity for expression in the Treatise on the Passion (1533-34), (11) written after More's retirement from public life, and particularly in the important works written after he was imprisoned in the Tower of London in April 1534. His greatest English work, A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, (12) is classic of prison literature, revealing in fictional form the profound significance of Christian faith in the face of suffering and persecution. More's final work, the Latin DeTristitia Christi (The Sadness of Christ), (13) which survives in holograph manuscript smuggled from his cell, is series of very personal meditations on Christ's agony before the Passion, and provides an intimate picture of More's own mind as he faced impending execution. Not to be omitted from consideration of More's literary works are his letters, (14) in Latin and English, which range from defenses of Christian humanism and the great correspondence with Erasmus, the primary figure of that movement and More's other self, through various letters concerned with political and diplomatic matters to the moving letters to his own family, particularly those written during his imprisonment, (15) which give primary witness to that integrity of conscience that brought More to the block and made him a man for all seasons. …

Un madrigalista inedito del secondo Cinquecento

Evoking Petrarchan atmospheres as well as Tasso’s mannerist style, the 48 madrigals by Romano Alberti (c.1540-c.1600) - art essayist and member of the Accademia di San Luca - are organized around four themes, all of which are in perfect harmony with the occasional madrigal tradition that was so highly popular in the 16th century. They include works on love set in bucolic or mythological contexts; celebratory madrigals; exercises in translation from Latin (and possibly Greek) epigrams; and poetic divertissements intended as pure literary caprice. Preserved in Codex XIII d 54 at the Vittorio Emanuele III National Library of Naples, Alberti’s madrigals represent a key example of Baroque “piacevolezza”, in which phonics and rhythm take on a determining role.

Making Myron's Cow Moo?: Ecphrastic Epigram and the Poetics of Simulation

Myron's bronze sculpture of a cow proved an extraordinarily popular subject for Greek and Latin epigram over an exceptionally long time-span ( Palatine Anthology 9.713-42, 793-98, Posidippus 66 A-B, Ausonius 63-71, Epigrammata Bobiensia 10-13). But why the fascination? This article reads the image as an icon for the poetic simulations of ecphrastic epigram. First, it emphasises the ambivalence with which the poems celebrates the statue's verisimilitude: Myron's bronze cow at once convinces and fails to convince. Second, it relates the mimetic make-believe of the statue to the illusionism of literary epigram, especially epigrams on artworks: the virtually real cow figures the various pretences of the genre, fluctuating between material image, epigraphic inscription, and anthologised text. The more poems added to the series, the more pressing the replicative agenda: Myron's reproduction of a cow keeps on reproducing itself, in ever more playful (and playfully contrived) ways.

Making Myron's Cow Moo?: Ecphrastic Epigram and the Poetics of Simulation

Myron's bronze sculpture of a cow proved an extraordinarily popular subject for Greek and Latin epigram over an exceptionally long time-span (Palatine Anthology 9.713-42, 793-98, Posidippus 66 A-B, Ausonius 63-71, Epigrammata Bobiensia 10-13). But why the fascination? This article reads the image as an icon for the poetic simulations of ecphrastic epigram. First, it emphasises the ambivalence with which the poems celebrates the statue's verisimilitude: Myron's bronze cow at once convinces and fails to convince. Second, it relates the mimetic make-believe of the statue to the illusionism of literary epigram, especially epigrams on artworks: the virtually real cow figures the various pretences of the genre, fluctuating between material image, epigraphic inscription, and anthologised text. The more poems added to the series, the more pressing the replicative agenda: Myron's reproduction of a cow keeps on reproducing itself, in ever more playful (and playfully contrived) ways.

Charles Fitz-Geffry and the ‘War of the Theaters’

A number of Latin epigrams in Charles Fitz-Geffry’s Affaniae (1601) reflect on the ‘Wars of the Theatres’ of the period. As with most epigrams, individuals are masked by fictional names, but identification is possible through the supplementary evidence of the manuscript Latin letters of Fitz-Geffry’s friend, Degory Wheare, and by comparison with other epigrams. In particular, biting epigrams are directed against John Weever, under the name Fabrianus, and Thomas Bastard. A third epigram is directed towards John Marston, and the correspondence of Wheare shows an awareness of the tensions between Marston and Jonson in early 1601. Overall, the epigrams and correspondence manifest the sensitive dynamics of personal attacks within the English literary sphere at this time, and the resultant care (and even self-censorship) as a poet moved toward print.