Roman Epic

Julius Caesar, one of the protagonists of Lucan’s Pharsalia, disappears from the scene for a long time after the Battle of Pharsalus. He reappears at the end of Book 9, when he pays a visit to the ruined city of Troy. The function and the source of this historically unsupported scene are both worth examining. Earlier research disclosed as the literary source of the Troy scene the episode in Aeneid Book 8, when Evander shows Aeneas the future site of Rome. While fully accepting that, I would like to present another possible source that might have as much effect on the constructing of Lucan’s Troy as the Evander–scene: the katabasis in Book 6 of the Aeneid. Definite parallelisms can be identified between the two scenes on both motivic and textual levels. Furthermore, the connection between these three scenes can be proved on the level of content, since by examining them together the real purpose of the Troy scene can be decoded: Lucan predicts Rome’s destruction in this episode.

Die Psychomachia des Prudentius stellt das erste vollkommen allegorische Epos des Abendlandes dar. Es ist insbesondere in der Kunst und Literatur des Mittelalters vielfältig rezipiert worden. Magnus Frisch legt nun erstmals einen Gesamtkommentar zu diesem Werk aus der Spätantike vor, der lange ein Desiderat der Forschung war. Er berücksichtigt die Erkenntnisse der philologischen, theologischen und mediävistischen Forschung der letzten Jahrzehnte.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/543630

In this article, the variants of the Toledo Bibl. Capit. Ms. 102-2 manuscript are analysed. These variants do not coincide with those of Vergil’s Aeneid, which are more recent. Some of the referred lines are explained by means of critic and literary comments and notes.

Detailed notes on Virgil's epic. The notes cover the overall relation of Virgil's work to the Homeric epics, the historical context of the Aeneid in the decline of the Roman Republic and the civil strife of the 1st Century BCE, the ambiguity of Virgil's relation to the Greek tradition and to philosophy, and the question of Virgil's attempt to celebrate the Roman achievement and the "way of the ancestors".

Presentation slides for a series of lectures on Virgil's epic. The lectures cover the overall relation of Virgil's work to the Homeric epics, the historical context of the Aeneid in the decline of the Roman Republic and the civil strife of the 1st Century BCE, the ambiguity of Virgil's relation to the Greek tradition and to philosophy, and the question of Virgil's attempt to celebrate the Roman achievement and the "way of the ancestors".

This paper will examine the claims of the excudent alii ('others will hammer out') priamel of Aeneid 6.847–53 within the immediate context of the parade's end, where Marcellus, parading the spolia opima, is used to exemplify the claims made about ne and speculative arts belonging to the Greeks, and war and the arts of empire to the Romans. It will be shown that certain, highly specic memories of the elder Marcellus are cued by the priamel that run directly counter to Anchises' claims. The paper will look at how these claims are spoken in character, and driven by specic narrative motives, and it will relate the mismatch of exemplied to exemplier to certain larger patterns within the Aeneid of things being left unsaid only to stand out all the more by being left unsaid. The paper concludes with a speculative essay on the necessary reductions and revisions that go into the making, and reading, of culturally instrumentalized monuments.

Cum Euryali matrem Vergilius describat, Homeri Andromacham in Iliados libro XXII delineatam imitatur. Sed in imitatione sua praesertim matris perturbationem et inopinati doloris novitatem, ad augendam erga mulierem miserationem, exprimit. Euryali mater etiam Vergilii Andromacham in Aeneidos libro III depictam imitatur propter communem fatum, dolorem et perenem suorum amissorum memoriam. Matris lamentum, denique, Euryali et Nisi gestorum narrationem omnino concludit, ut magis infirmorum dolor quam heroum gloria emineat.

Lo studio esamina due apostrofi virgiliane dedicate a giovani morti in guerra e seguite dai lamenti dei loro genitori. In tal modo il poeta esprime un duplice punto di vista su questi eventi, quello della gloria e quello del dolore incolmabile della perdita.

La relación entre los dioses y los mortales es un aspecto característico de la poesía épica, en la que las divinidades intervienen ya respaldando y amparando las acciones humanas, ya estorbando y obstaculizando su realización. En la Eneida de Virgilio, el relato de las aventuras de Eneas hasta asentarse en Italia y fundar la gens que dará origen a la futura Roma, son centrales los discursos en los que los dioses anuncian, describen y confirman el cumplimiento de eventos venideros, tanto en el breve plazo de las acciones del poema como en el lejano porvenir reservado a la Urbs. En la bibliografía crítica de los siglos XX y XXI, los análisis de las profecías de la Eneida se han centrado en los grandes anuncios sobre Roma para indagar si encerraban mensajes optimistas y pesimistas respecto del gobierno de Augusto. Sin dejar de lado este enfoque, que ha dado lugar a lecturas valiosas y fructíferas, la propuesta del presente estudio consiste en realizar un examen exhaustivo de todos los discursos proféticos de Eneida desde una perspectiva que privilegia su dimensión comunicativa. El análisis de los rasgos que caracterizan estos discursos con personajes divinos como emisores y humanos como destinatarios, de las acciones rituales que los acompañan y de la dificultad inherente a su interpretación se revelan como una herramienta para dilucidar la particular disposición de la esfera religiosa en Eneida, el funcionamiento del fatum y la representación de la historia en un texto central para la configuración de la identidad romana.

https://www.minoydavila.com.ar/MLA-927694109-dioses-y-hombres-en-la-eneida-de-virgilio-ma-emilia-cairo-_JM

https://www.amazon.com/Dioses-hombres-Eneida-Virgilio-Mediterráneo-ebook/dp/B098R8WKLW


Reseña de M. C. Dominguez / Review by M. C. Dominguez en Circe 26.1 (2022): https://cerac.unlpam.edu.ar/index.php/circe/article/view/6710

Reseña de C. Beltrão / Review by C. Beltrão en Phoînix 28.1 (2022):
https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/phoinix/article/view/52888/28881

In the Aeneid, the narrative function of the Camilla story is not obvious. An ironic reading, however, encouraged in part by the episode’s dialogue with Iliad 16, in part by its ring structure, enables readers to view it as a thought experiment. As such, it demonstrates the logical if bizarre outcome of a lifelong attachment to arms, for which the Labyrinth serves as metaphor. Otherwise so dissimilar, both Camilla and Aeneas become lost in their mazes, which is to say, are overmastered by arms. Ironically, therefore, the poem’s hero, virum at 1.1, becomes ferrum at 12.950.

in P. Johnston and S. Papaioannou (eds.) Idyllic Poetic Landscapes in Antiquity: Arcadia, the Golden Age, and the Locus Amoenus. Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 53 (2013): 261-74.

Drawing on established connections between Roman identity and an agricultural landscape, this paper examines how the imagery of disrupted pastoral and agrarian landscapes and characters represent the effects of civil war on the Roman people in Vergil's Aeneid and Lucan's Bellum Civile.  While disturbance and turmoil are already a part of the natural landscape in Vergil's Eclogues and Georgics, in epic, a genre that concerns itself with how empire and imperial power mediate Roman identity, the displacement of shepherds and agriculture partially redefines Roman identity in militaristic terms.  Vergil's pastoral characters, written into military roles as civic landscapes displace agrarian ones in the Aeneid, survive but fail to find a place in Lucan's ruined and desolate Pharsalian landscape in the Bellum Civile.  There, the broken natural landscape, unfit for agriculture, pastoralism, or trade, mirrors the redefinition of what is "Roman" and the occlusion of Rome's link to an idealized bucolic past.

Unlike classic war epics such as the Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid, whose heroes fight against external enemies, Lucan’s Pharsalia tells the story of a civil conflict. This circumstance makes it virtually impossible to include any gods in the action of the poem, as doing so would require
them to take sides in the conflict, which would be highly inappropriate. Therefore, inspired perhaps by Aristophanes (or drawing on his own powers of invention), Lucan substituted the ‘traditional’ Graeco‑Roman
deities with the Thessalian necromancer Erichtho – who, though human, turns out to be more powerful than the gods themselves. Endowed with qualities that mirror those of the Civil War itself – as well as supernatural powers and a sinister kind of creativity (by means of which she destroys life in order to create death) – Erichtho proves to be the only appropriate ‘divine’ patron for an epic about civil conflict and – in effect – may be seen as an allegorical ‘goddess’ of the Civil War.

With the success of Gladiator, both critics and scholars enthusiastically announced the return of a genre which had lain dormant for thirty years. However, this return raises important new questions which remain unanswered. Why did the epic come back, and why did it fall out of fashion? Are these the same kinds of epics as the 1950s and 60s, or are there aesthetic differences? Can we treat Kingdom of Heaven, 300 and Thor indiscriminately as one genre? Are non-Western histories like Hero and Mongol epics, too? Finally, what precisely do we mean when we talk about the return of the epic film, and why are they back?

The Return of the Epic Film offers a fresh way of thinking about a body of films which has dominated our screens for a decade. With contributions from top scholars in the field, the collection adopts a range of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore the epic film in the twenty-first century.

The interaction between the dead and the living is one of the stock scenes and most popular topics in Graeco-Roman epic since Homer (Hom. Od. 11.13–640). Many important studies have been dedicated to the analysis of the great importance of this bauform from a metapoetic perspective with necromancies affording the epic poets the opportunity to incorporate popular myths and historical figures of the past or (retrospective) future into their narrative, and to go beyond the scope of the epic plot. The same applies for Homer’s, Vergil’s, and more recently also Seneca’s and Lucan’s great influence on the descriptions of the underworld and the necromantic rituals in the Flavian epics of Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus. One of the core elements of this type scene, the communication between the living and the dead, which is the climax of and the main reason for necromancies, has, however, been widely neglected – and with good reason, as the nature of the dead is “notoriously complex, ambiguous, and even contradictory” (Heath, 2005, 398). While it is not possible to reconcile and explain all contradictions of the obscure verbal interactions in the necromantic episodes under discussion, this contribution delineates the most important narrative patterns and intra- and intertextual allusions in the depiction of the dead and their conversation with the living throughout the epic tradition from Homer to Silius Italicus. It argues that the obscurity and inconsistencies in the portrayal of the dead are a deliberate literary device used to compress the narrative and to highlight that life after death and the nature of the dead surpass human comprehension and that each epic poem gives its own unique voice to the dead in the underworld – either through striking innovations or interesting and unusual combinations of the already established narrative patterns.

This paper explores Ovid’s reception of hymnic traditions relating to Hermes in the Cupid-Apollo episode of Metamorphoses Book 1. Ovid’s depiction of Cupid alludes to Hermes in his quarrel with Apollo, as depicted in Alcaeus’ Hymn to Hermes and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Ovid’s allusions evoke the hymns’s thematic focus on theft, desire, competition, and divine prerogatives and attributes, themes that are also salient to the Metamorphoses more broadly. After exploring parallels between the Cupid-Apollo episode and the Hermes hymn tradition, I consider how Ovid, having presented a “Mercurial” Cupid, depicts an erotically motivated Mercury in subsequent episodes of Metamorphoses Books 1-2 and Fasti 5.663-92. Finally, the paper compares examples from ancient religion, art, and literature that link Eros/Cupid and Aphrodite/Venus with Hermes/Mercury, and considers ramifications of Ovid’s allusions to the Hermes hymn tradition in the Augustan context, particularly in relation to the princeps’ connections to the divine sphere.

The subject of the hero of Lucan’s Civil War is bound to cause debate as there are three different candidates who could all merit such a title: Caesar, Pompey, and Cato. This essay aims to compare and analyse the three main protagonists in an effort to establish that there is, in fact, no hero.

This chapter argues that Virgil's uses of late Republican history in the Aeneid are not always partisan, and are better seen as uses of historical writing (historiography). As a case study I look at two stories about general Sertorius, which seem to inspire supernatural episodes in the epic: Hercules' assault on the monster Cacus in Aeneid 6, and the beloved tame deer in Aeneid 7. Sertorius was a rebel, and enemy of Pompey the Great. Nonetheless, Virgil seems to echo historical texts about him without taking a direct political stance.

This article offers a thorough study of Virgil's interaction with the myth of Eteocles and Polynices' war for the throne of Thebes, as represented especially in Athenian tragedy. It demonstrates that allusions to the Theban myth are crucial to the Aeneid's construction of a set of tensions and oppositions that play an important role in Virgil's reflection on the historical experience of Rome, especially in connection with the transition from Republic to Empire. In particular, interaction with Theban stories allows Virgil to explore: (1) the dichotomy between similarity and foreignness in the depiction of Rome's enemies; (2) the tension in differing attitudes towards the state as reflected in antithetical character types ––namely, the selfless youth who sacrifices himself for the community and the would-be tyrant prepared to go to any lengths to achieve sole power; and, finally, (3) the dichotomy between opposing notions of time defined by teleology, on the one hand, and circularity and repetition on the other, the two representing the differing temporalities of epic and tragedy, respectively.

In this paper I suggest that at the beginning of the Metamorphoses through narrative techniques and the structure of the verses, in particular lines 1.10-14, the poet claims to be a fabricator mundi and that his text exists before the creation of the world, becoming the model for its formation. In the epilogue, the poet also declares his certainty that his work will be eternal; it will live, that is, sine fine as he states at Tristia 2.63-4. This reading of sine fine actually alludes to the prophecy of Jupiter in the first book of the Aeneid where the phrase meant the eternity of the Roman dominion. The perpetuum carmen, as the poet characterised the Metamorphoses at 1.4, refers not only to the time-span of the work through to the poet's own time but more importantly to the eternal character of his poetry. It is the poetic genius which cannot be trapped in a specific time frame. There is a consensus among Ovidian scholars that in writing the Metamorphoses Ovid had Virgil and his work firmly in mind. In striving for originality, he also had to emulate almost the entire Greek and Roman literary tradition. In his perpetuum carmen, therefore, he was confronted with the task of composing an all-inclusive work with regard to time, subject-matter and literary genre. The purpose of this paper is to show how Ovid exploited certain methods and techniques in order to imply, through the narrative, the omnipotence of the poetic genius through the creation of his text.

This paper concerns epic anger, focusing on the specific means that are used to restrain it in two early scenes of Homer’s Iliad, and in the first simile of Virgil’s Aeneid.  In all three cases, characters temporarily lose control only to have to their anger reined in by persons/gods who are superior to them in descent, social standing, and political wherewithal: Achilles is restrained by Athena, Thersites by Odysseus, and the ‘ignoble rabble’ by a pious Roman statesman.  In each instance, the suppression of anger is synonymous with the restoration of a lost political balance, as ruler and ruled resume their proper place.  Recent articles by Denis Feeney and Damien Nelis have connected Virgil’s ‘statesman’ simile to the political upheavals of Iliad book 2, and Nelis has argued that the simile has all the markings of a soul image that symbolizes Juno’s enraged internal state.  By identifying certain Platonic features of the simile’s internal figuration, I argue that the simile’s psychic potentials are connected to its political content as soul to body; that it is a ‘state soul’ image à la Plato, but radically remade to articulate uniquely Roman ideas about both the soul and the state.