This book offers a concise, yet comprehensive companion volume to Tibullus and the Corpus Tibullianum by Kevin Newman, Robert Maltby and Peter Knox. Hans-Christian Günther is Professor of Classics at the University of Freiburg. He has published extensively on Augustan Poetry (i.a. Brill's Companion to Propertius and Brill's Companion to Horace), ancient and modern Greek poetry and philosophy. He is also the author of numerous verse translations from Latin, Italian, Modern, Greek, Georgian, Japanese and Chinese.
The canon of classical Greek and Latin poetry is built around big names, with Homer and Virgil at the center, but many ancient poems survive without a firm ascription to a known author. This negative category, anonymity, ties together texts as different as, for instance, the orally derived Homeric Hymns and the learned interpolation that is the Helen episode in Aeneid 2, but they all have in common that they have been maltreated in various ways, consciously or through neglect, by generations of readers and scholars, ancient as well as modern. These accumulated layers of obliteration, which can manifest, for instance, in textual distortions or aesthetic condemnation, make it all but impossible to access anonymous poems in their pristine shape and context. The essays collected in this volume attempt, each in its own way, to disentangle the bundles of historically accreted uncertainties and misconceptions that affect individual anonymous texts, including pseudepigrapha ascribed to Homer, Manetho, Virgil, and Tibullus, literary and inscribed epigrams, and unattributed fragments. Poems without Poets will be of interest to students and scholars working on any anonymous ancient texts, but also to readers seeking an introduction to classical poetry beyond the limits of the established canon.
By examining some early poetic understandings of what it might have meant to be Vergil, Ovid, and Tibullus, this volume explores what those authors meant to near-contemporaries, and what the construction of authorship they were a part of meant to the later western tradition.
This book presents the first commentary on the whole of [Tibullus] 3 in English. It consists of a text, translation, introduction and commentary. The text rests on the author’s autopsy of the most important manuscripts of [Tibullus]. The prose translation is as literal as possible, in order to bring out clearly the meaning of the Latin. The detailed line-by-line commentary serves to clarify the language and literary associations of the poems and to back up the theory that the whole work was composed by a single unitary author. It argues that what were previously thought of as separate sections of the book, composed by different authors at different times, were in fact the product of a single anonymous poet impersonating, or adopting the mask of, different characters in each section: Lygdamus (poems 1-6), a young Tibullus (7), a commentator on Sulpicia’s affair with Cerinthus (8-12), Sulpicia (13-18) and Tibullus (19-20). The close connections and associations between these different sections and their use of the same Augustan intertexts are shown to favour a unitary interpretation of the work. The main literary inspiration for the work, this volume argues, comes from the elegists of the Augustan period, but its date of composition could have been late in the first century AD, linking it with the other pseudepigraphical writings of this century such as the Virgilian and Ovidian Appendices.
What did the ancient Greeks eat and drink? What role did migration play? Why was emperor Nero popular with the ordinary people but less so with the upper classes? Why (according to ancient authors) was Oedipus ('with swollen foot') so called? For over 2,000 years the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome have captivated our collective imagination and provided inspiration for so many aspects of our lives, from culture, literature, drama, cinema, and television to society, education, and politics. Many of the roots of the way life is lived in the West today can be traced to the ancient civilizations, not only in politics, law, technology, philosophy, and science, but also in social and family life, language, and art. Beautiful illustrations, clear and authoritative entries, and a useful chronology and bibliography make this Companion the perfect guide for readers interested in learning more about the Graeco-Roman world. As well as providing sound information on all aspects of classical civilization such as history, politics, ethics, morals, law, society, religion, mythology, science and technology, language, literature, art, and scholarship, the entries in the Companion reflect the changing interdisciplinary aspects of classical studies, covering broad thematic subjects, such as race, nationalism, gender, ethics, and ecology, confirming the impact classical civilizations have had on the modern world.
Latin love elegy is one of the most important poetic genres in the Augustan era, also known as the golden age of Roman literature. This volume brings together leading scholars from Australia, Europe and North America to present and explore the Greek and Roman backdrop for Latin love elegy, the individual Latin love elegists (both the canonical and the non-canonical), their poems and influence on writers in later times. The book is designed as an accessible introduction for the general reader interested in Latin love elegy and the history of love and lament in Western literature, as well as a collection of critically stimulating essays for students and scholars of Latin poetry and of the classical tradition.
A Companion to Roman Love Elegy is the first comprehensive work dedicated solely to the study of love elegy. The genre is explored through 33 original essays thatoffer new and innovative approaches to specific elegists and the discipline as a whole. Contributors represent a range of established names and younger scholars, all of whom are respected experts in their fields Contains original, never before published essays, which are both accessible to a wide audience and offer a new approach to the love elegists and their work Includes 33 essays on the Roman elegists Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Sulpicia, and Ovid, as well as their Greek and Roman predecessors and later writers who were influenced by their work Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in Roman elegy from scholars who have used a variety of critical approaches to open up new avenues of understanding
This volume presents essays written in honour of Robert Maltby, Emeritus Professor of Latin at the University of Leeds. It offers a rich collection of modern scholarship covering a wide range of literary genres in Latin literature, spanning from Augustan times up to the Italian Renaissance. The value of this volume lies in its inclusion of new interpretations of well-discussed texts from the past, shedding light on texts that have recently garnered scholarly attention and sparked lively discussions. Fifteen essays reflect the main areas of scholarship and interests of the honoree in a variety of Roman literary genres, with special focus on the Corpus Tibullianum, but also on etymologising and textual criticism. The collection is not exclusively intended for classicists, historical linguists, and textual critics. By providing insightful discussions and fresh interpretations of themes and issues in Latin literature from a contemporary perspective, it also appeals to anyone interested in Mediterranean studies, the socio-cultural aspects of literature, and comparative literature.
