Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval

Critics of Herodotus have generally shown unease in the face of the religious passages of the Histories, a sense that he ‘lets himself down’ by delving into matters irrelevant to the proper purpose of history. They have tended consequently to latch on to isolated instances of scepticism in an attempt to vindicate Herodotus from imagined charges of obscurantism. Historians of Greek religion, on the other hand, by their concentration on ritual as the central feature of Greek religious experience, have often neglected the value of literary sources as evidence of religious belief; indeed the term belief has become something of a dirty word. This book not only places Herodotus' religious beliefs at the centre of his conception of history, but by seeing instances of scepticism and of belief in relation to one another redresses the recent emphasis on the centrality of ritual, and paints a picture of Greek religion as a means for the explanation of events.

Drakōn is the first substantial survey in any language of the Graeco-Roman reflex of the dragon or the supernatural serpent, the drakōn or draco. Yet dragons were all-pervasive in both cultures: almost every major myth cycle of the Greek and Roman worlds featured a dragon-fight at its heart, including the sagas of Heracles, Jason, Perseus, Cadmus, and Odysseus. And Asclepius, the single most beloved and influential of the pagan gods from the late Classical period until Late Antiquity, was often manifest as a giant serpent, and carried a serpent on his staff even in his humanoid aspect. The first half of the book offers comprehensive accounts and analyses of the rich sources, literary and iconographic, for the principal dragons of myth, including the Hydra and the dragons that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides and the golden fleece. The second half turns to matters of cult, and to the initially paradoxical association of dragons and serpents with the most benign of deities, not only those of health and healing, like Asclepius and Hygieia, but also those of wealth and good luck, such as Zeus Meilichios and Agathos Daimon. Consideration is given also to the question of these gods’ vicars on earth, the actual snakes maintained as sacred denizens of their shrines. A final chapter considers the roles of both pagan dragon-slaying narratives and pagan serpent cults in shaping the beginnings of the tradition of the saintly dragon- and serpent-slaying tales we cherish still, the tradition that culminates in our own stories of Saints George and Patrick.

Early Latin has archaic futures like faxō ‘I shall do’, archaic subjunctives like faxim I may do’, duim ‘I may give’, or attigās ‘you may touch’, and archaic infinitives like impetrāssere ‘to achieve’. These forms are already quite rare in Plautus; a generation later, in Terence, they are almost non-existent. This study focuses on such forms from a synchronic perspective. It examines their meaning, distribution over clause types, register, and productivity. In order to reach reliable conclusions, the book looks at the usage of ‘regular’ futures, subjunctives, and infinitives in the early period. Thus, morphosyntactic phenomena such as the sequence of tenses and the use of subjunctives in prohibitions are examined and compared with classical practice. The work contains diachronic elements as well. Not only does it discuss the reconstruction of elements of the Proto-Italic and Proto-Indo-European verb systems, but it also shows the patterns by which archaic forms were lost in classical and later Latin.

This book investigates one of the most characteristic and prominent features of ancient Greek literature—the scene of debate or agon, in which with varying degrees of formality characters square up to each other and engage in a contest of words—and sets out for the first time to trace its changing representations through Homeric epic, historiography and tragedy. Combining literary dialogic theory with sociological approaches towards structure, it makes the claim that debate is best understood in relation to an institutional framework, in which issues of authority and dissent are variously set out and worked through. Intersecting with key recent scholarship, it shows that the Homeric poems establish, and scrutinize, the assembly as an institution which accommodates dissent, in line with an understanding of epic narrative as foundational; that the historians' marginal status as writers in an oral culture manifests itself in their representing debate as a challenge to the utility of public institutions; and that tragedy marks the formal institutionalization of dissent in its adversarial structure with an onus on speaking back, which offers a new way of thinking about tragic politics in terms of the process by which dissent is enacted and managed. This book demonstrates not only the fundamental importance of debate to these genres, but also the ways representations of debate construct an agonistic mentality which intersects with and informs the broader cultural construction of a citizen community.

This book offers a new reading of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, a poem which is here dated to Vespasian's regime (70–79 ce). Its primary purpose is to show that Valerius' epic reflects the restorative ideals of Vespasianic Rome, a thesis that sets it apart from the largely ‘pessimistic’ readings of other scholars. An important element of Valerius' poetics of recovery is an engagement with Lucan's iconoclastic Bellum Civile, a poem whose deconstructive tendencies offered Valerius a poetic point of departure for his attempt to renew the epic genre in the context of the political renewal triggered by Vespasian's accession to power. Thus, a secondary purpose of this study is to examine Valerius' response to his most recent epic predecessor, Lucan, a topic that has been woefully understudied. Accordingly, this work interprets Valerius' Argonauticaas a reaction to two primary stimuli, one poetic — Lucan's deconstructive epic of civil war — and one political — Vespasian's restoration of order following the destructive civil war of 68–69. The approach is thus both formalist and historicist: the book seeks not only to elucidate Valerius' dynamic appropriation of Lucan but also to associate the Argonautica's formal gestures with a specific socio-political context.

This book, arising out of a conference at University College London in 2009, examines erôs as an emotion in ancient Greek culture. It considers the phenomenology, psychology, and physiology of erôs; its associated language, metaphors, and imagery; the overlap of erôs with other emotions (jealousy, madness, philia, pothos); its role in political society; and the relationship between the human emotion and Eros the god. These topics build on recent advances in understanding of ancient Greek homo- and heterosexual customs and practices, visual and textual erotica, and philosophical approaches to erôs as manageable appetite or passion. However, the principal aim of the volume is to apply to erôs the theoretical insights offered by the rapidly expanding field of emotion studies, both in ancient cultures and elsewhere in the humanities and social sciences, thus maintaining throughout the focus on erôs as emotion. The volume covers a very broad range of sources and theoretical approaches, both in the chronological and the generic sense: all important thinking about the nature of erôs is considered, spanning the entire period from Hesiod to the Second Sophistic, including the input offered by figurative arts. Generically the volume ranges from Archaic epic and lyric poetry, through tragedy and comedy, to philosophical and technical treatises and more, and includes contributions from many scholars well published in the field of ancient Greek emotions – thus marking an important addition to this field.

The force of example was a distinctive determiner of Roman identity. However, examples always rely upon the response of an audience, and are dependent upon context. Even where the example presented is positive, we cannot always suppress any negative associations it may also carry. This book considers the virtues and vices they embody, their status as exemplars, and the process by which Silius as epic poet heroizes, demonizes, and establishes models. The book argues that example is a vital source of significance within the Punica, but also an inherently unstable mode, the lability of which affects both Silius' epic heroes and his villainous Hannibal.

Ancient scholiasts and modern scholars have long been aware of a specialized feminine vocabulary (terms of endearment, a special word for ‘please’, and interjections) used by the authors of Roman comedy. This study investigates the cultural implications of these linguistic choices for female characters. Lexical mannerisms are, it emerges, only one manifestation of a larger tendency to portray women as disregarding of interpersonal boundaries and moral principles in their attitudes towards others and themselves. Yet comedy also employs allegedly feminine features of speech as a way to undermine masculine identities, creating ambiguous figures such as the comic lover. Conversely, masculine points of view are often grafted onto the speech of comedic women. Most comedic roles thus represent both the dominant cultural discourse (male) and the voices this discourse attempts to exclude (female). The tension between these voices, which constitutes an implicit theme in the first half of this study, takes center stage in the second half. This part of the book explores the interfaces between the feminine discourses of Roman comedy and other ancient perceptions about gender and speech. Contemporary Roman notions of gender and boundaries, and Plautus' use of bacchanalia as a metaphor for acting, come into focus first. The narrative moves further away from Plautus and Terence, to examine Greek and Roman assumptions about identity and language, and then moves to propose that the Platonic concept of the chôra is a particularly useful lens for examining the feminine in Roman comedy.

This book explores the cultural significance of labelling certain films as ‘epics’, arguing that there is a meaningful relationship between films set in antiquity and the classical epic tradition. The connection between cinematic and literary epic genres is particularly apparent in films which adapt classical epic for the screen, and the book begins with a detailed assessment of movies including Ulysses, Troy, O Brother Where Art Thou, and Jason and the Argonauts, focusing on themes such as heroism and kleos, the depiction of the gods, and narrative structure. It then considers a series of case-studies of Hollywood historical epics which further demonstrate the ways in which cinema receives and engages with the themes of classical epic. The relationship between Gladiator and The Fall of the Roman Empire demonstrates the importance of tradition, while the archetypal epic themes of heroism and spectacle are explored through Spartacus and Ben-Hur. Finally, common tropes surrounding epic are discussed, focusing on the performance of epic in the ancient and modern worlds, and its perceived social role, and the widespread parody of epic, in both literature and cinema. Through this consideration of how epic can manifest itself through different periods and cultures, we learn how cinema makes a powerful claim to be a modern vehicle for a very ancient tradition.

The Astronomica of Manilius is a poem in five books, at least partly written under Augustus, which purports to teach the reader the art of astrology and the means by which an accurate horoscope may be cast. It is, therefore, a text from the classical age of Latin literature which deals with a topic to whose enduring popular interest any daily western newspaper will testify. And yet, despite some notable modern exceptions, the infamously harsh verdict of Manilius’ most famous twentieth-century editor, A. E. Housman, continues to cast an imposing shadow on the poem, especially for Anglophone readers. The current volume—seeks to lift this shadow once and for all, as it brings together an international contingent of scholars for an interdisciplinary exploration of Manilius at an auspiciously significant time, close to the bimillennial celebration of the poem’s composition. The range of perspectives from which Manilius is approached in the present volume is testament to both the complexity of Manilius and the differing fruitful avenues for modern interdisciplinary enquiry. Matters of literary interest, especially generic affiliation and intertextuality, are complemented by approaches which assess the socio-political, philosophical, scientific, and astrological resonance of the poem. Moreover, as a salutary counterbalance to the relative neglect of our author in recent times, the popular reception of the poem, especially in Renaissance times, is also explored.