Introduction

This book is the English version of a work first published in Italian in 1983 and reprinted in 2016. It originated from my tesi di laurea in Latin literature completed a few years earlier at the University of Florence under the supervision of Antonio La Penna, and followed the tenets of that disciplinary sphere, as was customary in Italian academia at the time: it focused on the philological dimension of Ovid’s text, the framing of the individual episode within the structure of the immediate context and the poem as a whole, and analysis of language and style. The main aim of the work was to interpret the two important episodes of Narcissus and Pygmalion—i.e. Ovid’s rewriting of the respective myths—and to highlight the author’s poetics, in response to the considerable interest that had grown in the latter decades of the twentieth century (documented, and greatly bolstered, by G.B. Conte’s influential 1974 essay ...

Paulo maiora canamus Raccolta di studi per Paolo Mastandrea

This miscellaneous volume in honour of Paolo Mastandrea includes contributions by colleagues and friends dealing with some of the main topics of his scientific interests: intertextuality, late Latin studies, philological problems, the legacy of Classics in Renaissance, digital humanities. The first section, «Literary History and Intertextuality», focuses on special patterns in Latin literature within a very wide chronological range, from Vergil to Optatianus. Specific attention is dedicated to elegy and to mythological characters in elegy and tragedy. The section named «Philological Notes» deals with critical problems within texts by Sallustius, Macrobius and Historia Augusta. The following section, «Late Latin studies», is dedicated to several authors and topics: Simphosius’ Aenigmata, Sidonius, Historia Augusta, Claudianus, Epigrammata Bobiensia, Johannes Lydus and literary topoi used in late Latin texts. The final one, «Classical Reception Studies», examines a few examples of the legacy of Latin authors in the Italian Renaissance. A history of the database Musisque Deoque, along with the future perspectives of this crucial project designed in 2005 by Paolo Mastandrea, are provided in a specific «Appendix».

L'uso di epos nella letteratura latina Questioni testuali ed esegetiche (Lucilio, Orazio, Ovidio, Stazio, Marziale) e la definizione in Diomede (GLK III 483.27 ss.)

The contribution explores the use of epos in Latin literature, a very rare and often uncertain term in the manuscript tradition, in contrast with its later fortune. Starting from the examination of the detailed definition of it in Diomedes' Ars grammatica, all the five attestations of epos in Latin poets (Lucilius, Horace, Ovid, Statius and Martial) are examined, evaluating readings and conjectures in the search for the more reliable text, on the basis of the context and parallel passages. Research shows that the term in the Greek-Latin world had a partly different meaning from the current one, suitable for other literary genres, in addition to the epic poetry.

Beyond Tribadism: Alternate Discourses on Female Homoeroticism in Greek and Latin Literature

<p>Scholarly accounts of sexuality in the ancient world have placed much emphasis on the normative dichotomy of activity and passivity. In the case of female homoeroticism, scholars have focussed largely on the figure of the so-called tribas, a masculinised, aggressively penetrative female who takes the active role in sexual relations with women. My thesis seeks to set out a wider conceptualisation of female homoeroticism that encompasses erotic sensuality between conventionally feminine women. The first chapter surveys previous scholarship on ancient sexuality and gender and on female homoeroticism in particular, examining the difficulties in terminology and methodology inherent in such a project. The second chapter turns to the Callisto episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, beginning with the kiss between the huntress Callisto and Jupiter, who is disguised as Callisto’s patron goddess Diana. The Callisto episode contains hints of previous intimacy between Callisto and Diana, and the kiss scene can be read as an erotic interaction between the two, both of whom are portrayed as conventionally feminine rather than tribadic. The third chapter examines several Greek intertexts for the Callisto episode: Callimachus’ hymns to Athena and Artemis, and the story of Leucippus as narrated by Parthenius and Pausanias. These narratives exhibit a similar dynamic to the Callisto episode, in that they eroticise the relationships both between Diana and her companions and amongst those companions. An educated reader of Ovid’s Metamorphoses would plausibly have had these Greek texts in mind, and would thus have been more likely to read the relationship between Diana and Callisto as homoerotic. Finally, the fourth chapter approaches Statius’ Achilleid from the perspective of female homoeroticism, a move without precedent in past scholarship. The relationship between Deidameia and the cross-dressed Achilles engages intertextually with the Callisto episode, presenting another exclusively female-homosocial environment in which homoerotic desires can flourish.</p>

Beyond Tribadism: Alternate Discourses on Female Homoeroticism in Greek and Latin Literature

<p>Scholarly accounts of sexuality in the ancient world have placed much emphasis on the normative dichotomy of activity and passivity. In the case of female homoeroticism, scholars have focussed largely on the figure of the so-called tribas, a masculinised, aggressively penetrative female who takes the active role in sexual relations with women. My thesis seeks to set out a wider conceptualisation of female homoeroticism that encompasses erotic sensuality between conventionally feminine women. The first chapter surveys previous scholarship on ancient sexuality and gender and on female homoeroticism in particular, examining the difficulties in terminology and methodology inherent in such a project. The second chapter turns to the Callisto episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, beginning with the kiss between the huntress Callisto and Jupiter, who is disguised as Callisto’s patron goddess Diana. The Callisto episode contains hints of previous intimacy between Callisto and Diana, and the kiss scene can be read as an erotic interaction between the two, both of whom are portrayed as conventionally feminine rather than tribadic. The third chapter examines several Greek intertexts for the Callisto episode: Callimachus’ hymns to Athena and Artemis, and the story of Leucippus as narrated by Parthenius and Pausanias. These narratives exhibit a similar dynamic to the Callisto episode, in that they eroticise the relationships both between Diana and her companions and amongst those companions. An educated reader of Ovid’s Metamorphoses would plausibly have had these Greek texts in mind, and would thus have been more likely to read the relationship between Diana and Callisto as homoerotic. Finally, the fourth chapter approaches Statius’ Achilleid from the perspective of female homoeroticism, a move without precedent in past scholarship. The relationship between Deidameia and the cross-dressed Achilles engages intertextually with the Callisto episode, presenting another exclusively female-homosocial environment in which homoerotic desires can flourish.</p>

CAN FIGURES PERSUADE? ZEUGMA AS A FIGURE OF PERSUASION IN LATIN

Use of rhetorical figures has been an element of persuasive speech at least since Gorgias of Leontini, for whom such deliberate deviations from ordinary literal language were a defining feature of what he called the ‘psychagogic art’. But must we consider figures of speech limited to an ornamental and merely stylistic function, as some ancient and still many modern theorists suggest? Not according to contemporary cognitive rhetoric, which proposes that figures of speech can play a fundamentally argumentative role in speech by evoking a level of shared meaning between speaker and listener, and simultaneously by affording the possibility of reorganizing this common ground. This paper argues that, in Latin literature, zeugma—the ‘linking together’ of two elements (usually nouns or prepositional phrases) with a third (usually a verb) that is semantically compatible with only one of them—can and very often does operate argumentatively, and that it does so by surfacing figurative relationships that normally remain below the conscious awareness of Latin speakers and by imparting a certain structure to these relationships. What very often motivates the selection of elements within zeugma—and what makes zeugma more than simply a stylistic device—are in fact metaphorical structures that are highly conventionalized in Latin's semantic system. In tapping into symbolic associations that are deeply entrenched in the language and thought of Latin speakers, zeugma therefore provided a ready-made device for constructing arguments in context.

Funkcja moralizatorska sentencji Appiusza

The article talks about the aphorisms of Appius (Appius Claudius Caecus, c. 360 BCE – 275 BCE), the first individualized figure in Latin literature. The author introduces the reader to the motifs of the aphorisms and at the same time proposes a translation of these verses.

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great inspired a body of literature that grew throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages by accumulating various episodes and local contributions across a host of languages, cultures, and appropriations. This extraordinary transmission of texts resulted in an ever evolving and often contradictory figure. In some accounts, Alexander’s ambition was a defining characteristic, in others benevolence; some writers idealized while others condemned Alexander; and in texts classified as histories from a modern perspective Alexander built an empire as the son of Philip of Macedon, while in texts classified as romance or legend Alexander was the illegitimate son of an Egyptian sorcerer and traveled to exotic lands populated by the creative lens of storytelling. Medieval writers engaged with a core set of plotlines inherited from their predecessors in Antiquity. These provided the narrative framework of Alexander’s childhood in Macedon, expansion of an empire stretching to India, and death in Babylon. However, countless adaptations and interpolations ensured the vibrancy of this narrative and created a version of Alexander dependent on availability of texts and authorial agenda. For example, writers and scribes in southern Italy had access to episodes that emphasized the limitations of Alexander’s ambition—how the intrepid explorer constructed a flying machine that the gods turned back to land and received prophecies of mortality in the far reaches of an earthly paradise. Under the influence of such accounts, they emphasized the temporality of Alexander’s career in allegorical terms that were, at least until these accounts traveled westward, quite different from the idealized warrior portrayed in French romances. The textual corpus that accounted for Alexander’s reception thus comprised a vast network founded on Greek and Latin but shaped by the vernacular. Navigating this network is a formidable task, and this article is written with a guiding principle in mind: to assist readers in finding their starting points for engaging with the medieval Alexander. It includes texts that were largely or exclusively devoted to Alexander’s exploits, and it identifies scholarly works intended for readers in the early stages of their navigation; more specialized research can be found in the scholarship cited. Finally, it organizes the medieval reception of Alexander the Great into two broad categories: Greek and Latin texts (both foundational accounts of Late Antiquity and medieval Latin literature) and the vernacular texts based on them.