Virgil

Classics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Fantham ◽  
Emily Fairey
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
Roman Civil War

Many regard Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 bce; also spelled Vergil in English) as the greatest of the Roman poets. His epic poem, the Aeneid, has been of continuing importance to Western literature. On its own merits, it is a masterpiece of epic poetry and the Latin language. Products of the chaos of the Roman civil war years, Virgil’s works show a longing for a more peaceful ordering of society. His major works, the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, emphasize different aspects of this desire. Virgil’s importance to world literature is difficult to underestimate. Later poets and writers, including Dante and Milton, have venerated and imitated him.

Seeing the Caesar in Germanicus: Reading Tacitus’ Annals with Lucan’s Bellum Civile

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-126
Author(s):  
Megan M. Daly
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Bellum Civile ◽  
The Past ◽  
Similar Images ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Roman Epic ◽  
Northern Frontier

AbstractThe recognition of the similarities between Roman epic poetry and historiography have led to valuable studies such as Joseph’s analysis of the relationship between Lucan’s Bellum Civile and Tacitus’ Histories. Traces of Lucan’s Bellum Civile can also be observed in Tacitus’ Annals 1 and 2, causing the beginning of Tiberius’ reign to look like a civil war in the making. The charismatic Germanicus sits with a supportive army on the northern frontier, much like Caesar, causing fear for Tiberius at Rome. Germanicus denies his chance to become the next Caesar and march on the city, but he exhibits other similarities with Lucan’s Caesar, including an association with Alexander the Great. Although at some points Germanicus seems to be repeating the past and reliving episodes experienced by Caesar in Bellum Civile, he prevents himself from fully realizing a Caesarian fate and becoming Lucan’s bad tyrant. The similar images, events, and themes presented by both authors create messages that reflect experiences from the authors’ own lives during dangerous times.

Epic Poetry into Contemporary Choreography

2018 ◽  
pp. 194-208
Author(s):  
Tom Sapsford
Keyword(s):  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
A Site

This chapter considers two recent dance adaptations of the Odyssey: New Movement Collective’s 2013 work Nest and Cathy Marston’s ‘Choreographing the Katabasis’, a project undertaken in 2015 at the APGRD, Oxford. The chapter analyses how both these works engage with the epic poem in ways that have historically been of interest to classical scholars. As a site-specific and multi-authored work, Nest emphasized the sense of multiplicity that has been noted both of the Odyssey’s mode of creation and its narration process. In developing her adaption from the Homeric text with the expertise of Oxford scholars, Cathy Marston produced a dance version of Odysseus’ encounter with the shade of his mother, Anticlea, which closely engaged with the formulaic aspects of the hexameter text in order to explore the interplay of rhythm and representation in both verbal and non-verbal languages.

The unexpected savior

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Rebeggiani
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Roman Civil War

In this chapter the author deals with the political implications of Statius’ account of Coroebus in Thebaid 1. He shows that certain traditional features of Roman narratives of political crisis (such as the idea of divine hostility and the notion of sacrificial substitution) are represented in the Coroebus episode to forge a connection with historical experiences of civil war. The author also shows that Statius builds on the ideological implications of Callimachus’ narrative of Coroebus to link the royal house of Argos to Imperial Rome, and that he turns to Virgil’s interaction with Argive mythology to transfer Callimachus’ story to a Roman civil war context. Thanks to this strategy, Statius can use the Coroebus episode as the mythical equivalent of a narrative, that of the providential outsider who comes and rescues Rome at times of crisis, which was particularly dear to both his patrons and the Flavian emperors.

Neulateinische Epik zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg, oder: Wer ist der Feind?

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-256
Author(s):  
Florian Schaffenrath
Keyword(s):  
Epic Poetry ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Latin Epic

Abstract In contrast to the literary production in certain vernacular languages like French or German, the period of the Thirty Years’ War was a very productive period for Neo-Latin epic poetry. Two examples discussed in this article elucidate the different purposes of these poems: With his Turcias (Paris 1625) Francois Le Clerc Du Tremblay tried to unite the European Christian rulers and to convince them of a common and united war against the Turks. On the other hand, the Jesuit Jacques d’Amiens published in Douai in 1648 his Bellum Germanicum, the first (and only) part of an epic poem that supports the Catholic part in the Thirty Years’ War. A comparison of the depiction of the enemies in particular in these two poems makes the differences visible.

scholarly journals Appropriate Transgression: An Intertextual Approach to Problems of Genre and Heroism in Statius' Achilleid

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hanna Z. C. Mason
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Foster Child ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Epic Poem

<p><b>Statius’ second epic poem, the Achilleid, deals with a subject matter that is particularly problematic: Achilles’ early life, in which he is raised by a centaur in the wilderness and then disguises himself as a woman in order to rape the princess of Scyros. Recent scholarship has also pointed to other problematic elements, such as Achilles’ troublesome relationship with his mother or the epic’s intertextual engagement with elegiac and ‘un-epic’ poetry. This thesis extends such scholarship by analysing Statius’ use of transgression in particular. It focuses primarily upon the heroic character of Achilles and the generic program of the Achilleid as a whole.</b></p> <p>The first chapter focuses upon Achilles’ childhood and early youth as a foster child and student of the centaur Chiron. It demonstrates that the hero’s upbringing is used to emphasise his ambiguous nature in line with the Homeric Iliad, as a hero who is capable of acting appropriately, but chooses not to. Achilles’ wild and bestial nature is emphasised by its difference to the half-human character of Chiron, who might be expected to be act like an animal, but instead becomes an example of civilisation overcoming innate savagery, an example of what Achilles could have been. The second chapter discusses the ambiguities inherent in a study of transgression, in the light of Achilles’ transvestite episode on Scyros. Numerous intertextual allusions construct various sets of expected behaviours for the transvestite youth, but his failure to live up to any of them portrays him as a truly transgressive hero. In this way, he is similar to Hercules or Bacchus, whose heroism is constructed partly upon their transgressive natures and inability to conform to societal custom. In the final chapter, the study of transgression is extended to Statius’ generic program, associating the epic with elegy. Statius employs many elegiac tropes, and makes numerous allusions to the poetry of elegists such as Ovid and Propertius. In particular, elegiac poetry’s peculiar trope of constructing and emphasising boundaries in order that they may be crossed (thus making the poetry feel more transgressive) is mirrored in the Achilleid. In this way, the Achilleid’s engagement with transgression is considered to be, in part, a method for presenting an innately problematic hero to Statius’ Flavian audience in an accessible and interesting manner.</p>

scholarly journals The messiness of victory and heroism: A brief response to Carl Schmitt

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 662-673
Author(s):  
Petar Bojanic ◽  
Edward Djordjevic
Keyword(s):  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Epic Poem

The article focuses on a passage from Carl Schmitt?s Ex Captivitate Salus - a book famously written in a Nurnberg prison in 1946 - in which he draws, from memory, on a story derived from Serbian epic poetry, to justify his understanding of historiography, victory, and the figure of the hero. Analyzing the entire Serbian epic poem from which Schmitt extracts the vignette in question, we show how the text of the poem presents a significantly more complicated and messy picture of the figures of victor, victory, and hero, heroism. The anonymous Serbian poet, addressing himself to his contemporary audience, with which he is intimately familiar, really subverts simplistic expectations regarding the heroism and victory of the Serbian hero, Marko Kraljevic. Finally, the article contrasts these complex and at times paradoxical figures of victory and the hero in the poem with their presentation in Carl Schmitt?s writing.

Rhetoric and Epic

2014 ◽  
pp. 224-236
Author(s):  
Jon Hall
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Rhetorical Education ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Stylistic Development

This chapter examines the influence of rhetorical education on the stylistic development of epic poetry in ancient Rome, focusing in particular on the works of Ovid (Metamorphoses) and Lucan (Civil War) (although the role of rhetoric in Virgil’s Aeneid is also briefly discussed). As both ancient and modern commentators have noted, training in rhetorical declamation at school seems to have fostered in Roman students the use of stylistic tropes, figures, and mannerisms that can also be discerned in the verse of Ovid and Lucan. These figures include hyperbole, paradox, and the formulation of clever sententiae, elements frequently designed to engage the intellect as much as the emotions. Although such devices often complement the artistic aims of these poets, their prevalence points to a complex and fascinating interaction between rhetoric and epic composition, producing a subgenre sometimes labeled rhetorical epic.

New Light on the Society of Byzantine Italy

2020 ◽  
pp. 157-195
Author(s):  
Ghislaine Noyé
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Military Units ◽  
Written Sources

In the tenth century, Byzantium still had substantial possessions in southern Italy: the Catepanate kept its own private law and its Latin language and rite, while the theme of Calabria was thoroughly Hellenized. They developed a strong sense of independence, due to bad government and the failure of the Empire to defend them against Arab raids, except by paying tribute. In the eleventh century, written sources and archaeology reveal a multiplication of fortified settlements and refuges, built by public and religious authorities, and also by the aristocracy, but the increased presence of professional military units increased local dissension. The only large estates belonged to a few Calabrian bishoprics. The main difference between the two provinces lay in the syncopated chronology of their evolution. The Apulian economy grew in the tenth century, with the development of the ports on the Adriatic and the Mediterranean oil trade, which enriched notables, at a time when Calabria was being devastated by the Arabs. After a fortification campaign and some fiscal and military measures provided by Byzantium, the Calabrian economy prospered, exporting wheat, raw silk, iron, and gold. The Arabs moved their attacks north, targeting Apulia, which was in the grip of civil war: in each city the anti-Byzantine faction revolted with the support of Lombards and local conterati troops. In Calabria, administration and defence fragmented and were taken over, in the case of towns, by virtually autonomous kastra, and, in the countryside, by the aristocracy.

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