Roman Epic Research Articles

Monica R. Gale, J. H. D. Scourfield (Edd.): Texts and Violence in the Roman World. Andrew M. McClellan: Abused Bodies in Roman Epic.

As a critical journal for all classical studies, the GNOMON fosters the links between the distinct classical disciplines. It has thus an exceptional position among the classical review journals and allows familiarization with research and publications in neighbouring disciplines. The reviews address an international readership from all fields in classical studies. The GNOMON publishes reviews in German, English, French, Italian and Latin.

Off the Beaten Path: Generic Conflict and Narrative Delay in Punica 14

In Punica 14, Silius Italicus uses several digressions to associate Sicily with poetic traditions that were felt by the Romans to espouse a decidedly non- or anti-martial epic agenda (Alexandrian, Callimachean, neoteric). These digressions interrupt, delay and push back against the book's martial epic content, its narrative about Marcellus' invasion of the island. A conflict of genres or literary modes thus ensues in which epic's struggle to assert its hegemony over unepic literary traditions mirrors Rome's struggle to conquer Sicily. Through this conflict Silius explores the consequences of imperialism for Rome's Hellenistic heritage, including the influence of the Alexandrian poetic tradition on Roman epic.

Im Kielwasser des Verschlagenen: Odysseus’ Diskurs zwischen Schreiben und Kartografie

AbstractA hallmark of the Odyssey’s topography is its deterritorialization. Assuming that, in antiquity, sailing manuals had to reckon with the nautical and existential disorientation experienced on the high seas, these nautical expedients must have been reflected in Homer’s epic. And in fact, technical manuals and poetical imagination, topos and tropus here translate into each other. But if the Odyssey is actually based upon those sailing manuals, then certainly not as a mere versification of their underlying sources. Rather, it discloses their ‘poetic’ character, viz. their creativity in determining and describing places within the ‘placeless’ sea. The Odyssey obviously has recourse to those manuals, but only in order to carry on the proto-cartographic operations of their writing. This principle of ‘recursion’ – harking back to a putative origin, in order to re-determine it in a self-referential way – also characterizes post-Homeric adaptations of the Odyssey. Whether in a Roman epic, or in medieval romance or in a modern novel – in any case, a new ‘original’ Odyssey is created to rely upon. But particularly in the highly reverberatory modern Odyssies, the charts are overstretched, the tools become dysfunctional, and explorations go methodically astray. The more complex modern world-description, the more fatal its shortcomings – as if Odysseus, at the edge of modern cartography, had returned to the state of deterritorialization that spurred his very first departure.

Off the Beaten Path: Generic Conflict and Narrative Delay in Punica 14

In Punica 14, Silius Italicus uses several digressions to associate Sicily with poetic traditions that were felt by the Romans to espouse a decidedly non- or anti-martial epic agenda (Alexandrian, Callimachean, neoteric). These digressions interrupt, delay and push back against the book's martial epic content, its narrative about Marcellus' invasion of the island. A conflict of genres or literary modes thus ensues in which epic's struggle to assert its hegemony over unepic literary traditions mirrors Rome's struggle to conquer Sicily. Through this conflict Silius explores the consequences of imperialism for Rome's Hellenistic heritage, including the influence of the Alexandrian poetic tradition on Roman epic.

Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition by Catherine Ware (review)

Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition by Catherine Ware (review)

William Morris' Synthetic Aeneids: Virgil as Physical Object

William Morris' Aeneid translation of 1875 (The Aeneids of Virgil) is today criticized for its archaism and anachronism; it ought rather to be read as a deliberate layering of historical periods in the reception of the Roman epic. This strategy of historical layering is paralleled in Morris' other Aeneid project of the early 1870s, an original illuminated vellum codex of the poem in Latin, which also telescopes the historical trajectory of the source text by the layering of historical styles and details. Morris' translation should be understood as a similarly ambitious, if more democratic, attempt to create a ‘cumulative’ Aeneid.

Teaching Augustine’s Confessions in the Context of Mercer’s Great Books Program

Students in Mercer University’s Great Books program read Augustine’s Confessions in the third semester of a seven-semester sequence. Their previous reading of Greek and Roman epics and philosophical treatises as well as Biblical material equips them with a solid foundation for reading and discussing Augustine. This essay reflects on that preparation and models ways that instructors can use opening discussion questions related to those earlier readings to guide students into substantive reflection on the Confessions.

Argo funestas pressa bibisset aquas.Zur Ästhetik des poetologischen Schiffbruchs am Beispiel römischer Argonautica

From Homer on, seafaring (with storms) is one of the most frequent elements in epic narratives. It is not only an essential part of the hero’s journey, but, as is known, can also be an expression of the narrator’s poetic endeavor. But what if the narrator’s ship seems perforated and fragile, what if his actio threatens to sink or to get lost in the vast and thunderous ocean of epic? This article examines the externalization and formalization of nautical and aquatic dangers in Roman epic. Thus, it concentrates on those scenes of suspense where the text creates the aesthetic illusion and simulates that itself could somehow shipwreck, suffer damage, or stray off course. The different Roman versions of the Argonautica are particularly relevant for this research because, as accounts of the seefaring myth par excellence, they are highly self-reflective and tend to incorporate the internal motives errores, naufragium, and submersio within their literary forms. Of these poetae naufragi, Catullus and Valerius Flaccus seem to be the most impressive illusionists.

The eloquence of Dido: exploring speech and gender in Virgil’s Aeneid1

This paper explores the idea of female speech in Roman epic by comparing the public speeches of Dido welcoming first Ilioneus and then Aeneas at 1.561-78 and 1.613-30 with the analogous speeches of Latinus at 7.192-211 and 7.249-73. It applies concepts, ideas and observations about feminine discourse developed by scholars of Greek tragedy and Roman comedy to Virgil’s Aeneid with the aim of nuancing approaches to Dido as speaker and public persona. The article treats speech presentation, stylistic features, tone, metre and rhetoric and argues that it is very hard to extract gender from other aspects of the text, but that on balance Dido is presented as feminine in a number of ways. Her power is qualified and limited, she is more responsive and passive than Latinus and shows an emotional intensity and directness in contrast with the subtlety of her handling of the situation.

Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition

Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition

Early Roman Epic and the Maritime Moment

Early Roman Epic and the Maritime Moment

Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (Roman Literature and Its Contexts) by James J. O'Hara

408 PHOENIX believedwas his situation?thenwe will inevitably have difficulty inunderstanding what Cicero is trying todo, in this work and elsewhere.Indeed, theemphasis inGildenhard's book upon theprefaces may unwittingly contributeto an assumptionthatthe intellectual and argumentative content of Cicero's philosophical writings does not merit our serious engagement. This isa denselyarguedbookwhich offers most to thereader who is willing to engage closely with its clause-by-clause and word-by-word readings; but its style is remarkably lucidand itsexcellentindices make iteasy tonavigateforspecific passages and topics. It is, nonetheless, most rewardingly read as awhole, which does a great deal to fulfil its bold, and undeniably counter-intuitive, opening claim of revealing the Tusculans as a "profoundly original work" (vii). University of Glasgow Catherine Steel Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan. By James J.O'Hara. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress (Roman Literature and Its Contexts). 2007. Pp. xiv, 165. In another fine volume from this notable series, O'Hara explores the topic of inconsis tencyin five Latin epic poets; he is surelyrightto regard Catullus 64 andLucretius (and indeed Ovid's Metamorphoses) as belonging to epos in ancient terms. O'Hara's main contentions are that major inconsistencies have interpretative value in indicatingliterary and/orideologicalpurposes,and thatthisisan establishedfeature of the epic genre, often highlighted at a poem's beginning; this naturally favours the "unitarian" approach (inconsistencies express something key to the work) over the "analytical" one (theyare oversights or transmissionslippages). In his first chapter (8-32) he establishes that such inconsistencies go back not just to hellenistic precedent (e.g., the issue ofwhether the Argo is the first ship isalreadyraised in Apollonius) but toHomer; he isnot afraidto admit that some inconsistencies demand an analytical explanation (e.g., the dual verbs in the embassy of Iliad Book 9, clearly looking back to a two-person delegation at an earlier stage of composition), but lays down some important principles for the unitarian approach: the needs of the particular scene or dramatic episode are often more important than overall consistency, and accordingly we should not require ancient epics to show an anachronistic interestindeep and consistentcharacterisation(nor tragedies:he righdyalludes to the work ofTycho vonWilamowitz-Moellendorf), while the tendencyof ancient epos to allude toalternative forms of itsplotsandmyths isestablishedfromtheearliestpoint (e.g., Helen is linked with bothTroy andEgypt intheOdyssey, alludingto twoseparate versions of her travels). The chapteronCatullus 64 (33-54) looksat theoft-notedinconsistency thatthe Argo here seems tobe the first ship (64.11) while the flashback passage of 64.51-264 clearly shows Theseus sailing(64.53).O'Hara tiesthisup nicely with the matching inconsistency on thematter of heroic virtue (the famous vestis is said to contain heroum virtutes but all we get is thedeserting Theseus, and thegreat Achilles of theFates' prophecyisa homicidal maniac?the wonderfullyironicquareof line372 isrighdy highlighted),and points to the irony created by the contrast between the internal narrator and audience and the knowing impliedreader.One could indeed argue further that thepoem highlightstheproblem of reliability at itsverybeginningby prominendypresentingthewhole storyas hearsay BOOKREVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 409 (dicuntur, 64.2). This is all nicely done: Iwould have also welcomed some account of the poem's complexend, which containsfurther potential inconsistency with itsopening (the "modern" vices listed of, e.g., fratricide and incest are of course famously prominent in the heroic period). The chapteron Lucretius (55-76) mainly considersthefamously paradoxicalopening of the poem, inwhich the goddess Venus is called on to intervene inRome in an Epicurean work which otherwise regards divine non-intervention as axiomatic and indeed notes this prominentlyin the same proem (1.44-49, rightly retained in the text).O'Hara neatly linksthis with the traditionalidea of the "anti-LucretiusinLucretius," andmakes the essential points for the modern reader: the conventional Roman reader is being moved from familiar and traditional material in the divine invocation to a new philosophical view of the world, and there are clear tensions between Epicurean serenity and rationality and poetic traditionand passion. One might usefullyadd that it is inorder topackage the revolutionary with theconventionalthatLucretius adopts thefamiliar but alreadyhighly archaic style of the century-old school author Ennius, a complete contrast with themodern style of the contemporary Catullus 64. The chapteron the Aeneid (77-104) contains an excellentcollectionof the (many) inconsistent variant...

Inconsistency in Roman Epic (review)

Inconsistency in Roman Epic (review)

Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (review)

Inconsistency in Roman Epic: Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan (review)

Big Screen Rome (review)

Reviewed by: Big Screen Rome Danielle La Londe Monica Silveira Cyrino . Big Screen Rome. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005. Pp. xiii, 274. $72.95 (hb.). ISBN 1-4051-1683-8; $32.95 (pb.). ISBN 1-4051-1684-6. The study of cinema depicting antiquity has been gaining momentum among classicists in recent years. One of the newest additions is Monica Silveira Cyrino's survey of nine films set in ancient Rome, chronologically arranged by production dates from the early fifties to publication of her [End Page 466] book. In her introduction, Cyrino states that the aim of her book is to show how modern filmmakers use the images and characters of ancient Rome as a means to discuss contemporary issues (2–3). It is certainly difficult to select so small a group of films to focus on, but Cyrino states that personal preference and the experience of many years of teaching these films have guided her (3). This information alone is helpful to an instructor planning to use films in a course. Cyrino specifically states that she wrote this book with instructors and undergraduates in mind, and in her introduction explains that the chapters can also be grouped thematically into religious-themed epics, secular epics, comedy, and the recent film Gladiator. Her thematic discussions of the comedies and Gladiator belie a more distinct and simple division—mid-century Roman epics and their reception. The chapters lend themselves to flexible and effective use in a course incorporating film. Each of the nine chapters is devoted to a different film: Quo Vadis (1951 version), The Robe, Ben-Hur (1959 version), Spartacus, Cleopatra (1963 version), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Monty Python's Life of Brian, History of the World, Part I (the Roman empire sequence), and Gladiator. The pedagogical benefit of this structure is that the chapters need not be read in order, but as suits the particular course goals. The chapters do build on themes mentioned in other chapters, such as representations of gender stereotypes and political ideologies, but not to such an extent that they cannot stand on their own. Each chapter is further categorized into five sections: plot outline, ancient background, background to the film, making the movie, and themes and interpretations. Further, each chapter concludes with a list of "core issues," questions intended to promote class discussions. Often, these questions can be answered merely from reading the chapters, rather than challenging the student to think critically about the movie itself, but they still provide useful starting points for discussion. Cyrino provides a wealth of information on the ancient and modern back-grounds of each movie. At times, however, the ancient background section seems out of place and too long in relation to the more critically useful "making the movie" and "themes and interpretations" sections. For example, the ancient background sections for The Robe, Ben-Hur, and Monty Python's Life of Brian cover the same general time-period, and each section contains both repeated and new information. Perhaps the condensation of the individual sections into one that could be referred to when needed would have been more useful. Moreover, the ancient background is not consistently integrated into a discussion of each movie plot. The ancient historical information is relevant to the discussion of modern cinema, but only as a point of departure. A lack of integration results in unanswered questions, such as what does the accurate or inaccurate depiction of historical events tell us about the themes of the film and which aspects of history are considered important or unimportant in popular culture. On the other hand, Cyrino answers these quite effectively in her strongest chapter, chapter 9, on Gladiator. Here, she points out how the historically implausible goal of the main character Maximus to return the empire to a republic in 180s a.d. Rome effectively characterizes Maximus as an old-fashioned hero appealing to modern American ideals (229). Her discussion of ancient Roman comedy in chapter 6 on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is fruitfully integrated into the discussion of the film's structure and the filmmakers' goals. She points out which aspects of [End Page 467...

Introduction: Ennius and the Traditions of Epic

The challenges involved in writing about Ennius's Annales hardly need restating. Of the works of Ennius (and he was apparently a prolific writer), we have only a list of titles and some fragments—for the Annales approximately 600 full or partial lines—that have been preserved mostly by later authors, especially grammarians.1 Add to this our patchy knowledge of the social, political, and cultural context in which the Annales was produced, and it becomes evident that any study of this epic will be more likely to raise questions and problems than to give clear and straightforward answers. The reader is thus entitled to ask why we should take the trouble to bring together a collection of papers about an author and a poem the study of which will inevitably involve a significant amount of guesswork. When we organized the panel "Ennius and the Invention of Roman Epic" for the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in San Francisco in January 2004, our intent was clear. The last twenty years have witnessed a renewed, if still somewhat tentative, interest in the study of archaic Latin literature, spurred, in the first instance, by the appearance [End Page 397] of Otto Skutsch's authoritative edition of the fragments of the Annales. In itself the culmination of a scholarly career with its roots in a great tradition,2 the work of Skutsch, along with the important textual studies of Sebastiano Timpanaro and Scevola Mariotti, which represent the best of Italian philology,3 have enabled investigations that look beyond metrics and stylistics, beyond arguments about placing fragments in their correct context, and beyond source hunting and influence tracing—all concerns that rightly dominated the study of the fragments of Ennius at one time. The fruits of these advances are now being reaped in an array of studies that, by the application of new theories and new methodologies, many of them influenced by intellectual currents in fields beyond classics, test conventional assumptions and traditional readings of early Roman literary production. It seemed to us, then, that the time was ripe for bringing together a number of specialists in the field of archaic Latin literature and Roman cultural studies in order to reassess Ennius's epic. In all the papers that follow, reassessment of the Annales results, above all else, from approaching the poem within a specifically Roman frame that encompasses the analysis of the Annales' relationship with older Latin preliterary traditions, the social and cultural context in which the text was produced, its role in the articulation of a historical consciousness in the life of the Roman community, and, eventually, its varied reception. The contributors to this volume will give different and, at times, incompatible answers to the question of where Ennius's Annales stands today. Studies of the Annales, and of archaic Roman literature generally, are not defined by a unity of approach and methodology. To fashion a completely coherent and unified picture would mean denying the true state of affairs and giving up a real source of vitality for studies of this period. For this reason, in our role as editors, we have not attempted to hide disagreement or to reconcile differences. On the contrary, the purpose of this volume is to present the reader with the complex variety of approaches and readings that best characterize contemporary scholarship on the Annales. The eight [End Page 398] papers collected here represent a sampling of the work being done both by younger scholars and by established voices in the field. Five of the papers are revised and expanded versions of presentations made originally at the meeting in San Francisco. The three other papers, by Habinek, Rüpke, and Wiseman, were commissioned specifically for this volume in order to carry the discussion beyond the constraints imposed on the original group by the conference-panel format and into the specific areas of expertise of...

Trying Not To Cheat: Responses to Inconsistencies in Roman Epic

This paper discusses some of the arguments and methods of a forthcoming study of inconsistencies in Roman epic. After description of the shape of that book, the paper moves through some passages and problems in Catullus 64, Lucretius' De rerum natura, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Lucan's Pharsalia. My central claim is that not all inconsistencies need to be explained or amended away, or faulted, and that some need to be interpreted. Some types of "cheating," or of avoiding reading and interpreting the words in the text in the order in which they appear, are discussed.

Roman Epic Theatre? Reception, performance, and the poet in Virgil'sAeneid

Past responses to ancient literature and the reading practices of previous centuries are of central relevance to the contemporary exegesis of Greek and Roman authors. Professional classicists have at last come to recognise this. However, accounts of reception still tend to engage in a traditional form ofNachleben, as they unselfconsciously describe the extent of classical influences on later literary production. This process of influence is not as straightforward as it may first seem. It is often taken for granted in practice, if not in theory, that the movement is in one direction only – from antiquity to some later point - and also that the ancient text which ‘impacts on’ on the culture of a later period is the same ancient text that we apprehend today. Of course it isneverthe same text, even leaving aside the problems of transmission. The interaction between a text and its reception in another place, in another time, in another text, is really a dynamic two-way process. That interaction (which has much in common with intertextuality) involves, or is rather constituted by, our own interpretation of it.

Something to Have at Heart: Another Look at Memorization

T the baby out with the bathwater”—when I was little, I loved to hear my parents use this comic metaphor. Forty years later, thinking about the lost practice of “learning by heart,” this expression comes back to me: as educators, we threw the baby out with the bathwater. I’d like to trace memorization’s venerable—and sometimes ludicrous—history in education, recall its fall from academic favor, explore the ways it can enrich our students’ relationships with words and books, and empower their personal lives, and encourage its return to our classrooms. Memorization was vital to our pre-literate ancestors, the only reliable way they could keep track of and pass down to their children any kind of knowledge. What wasn’t learned verbatim might be forgotten or perhaps fatally misremembered, so, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains, “Lists of edible herbs and fruits, health tips, rules of behavior, patterns of inheritance, laws, geographical knowledge, rudiments of technology, and pearls of wisdom were all bundled into easily remembered sayings or verse” (Flow 121). After societies became literate, memorization continued to play a central role in education. In the western world, well into the beginning of the twentieth century, memorization of the Greek and Roman epics, of poetry, and of celebrated prose passages formed an important part of a student’s work. Traditional religious education has always involved memorization, even among those religions which so venerate their scriptures as written words that they are called “People of the Book”: Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Memorization was a central practice in the education of Jewish boys. Teacher: “Would you first like to recite something from the Torah?” Child: “Of course, that is what I was created for” (Brumberg 92). In the Hasidic yeshivas, the tradition of “

M. Von Albrecht, Roman Epic. An Interpretative Introduction (Mnemosyne Supplementum 189). Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 1999. Pp. x + 371. ISBN 90-04-11292-8. Fl. 223/US$ 131.00.

The author's approach to Roman epic is interpretative; the reader is invited to study a choice of typical texts, from the beginnings to the end of Antiquity. Famous poets are given the attention they deserve, but also some minor authors are discovered as precious 'missing links' between the ages. Special heed is paid to intertextual relationships between different epochs, cultures, literary genres, linguistic and literary patterns. The book is meant for students and teachers of classical and modern literatures, but also for all those interested in the history of literary genres and cultural ideas.