Author: Tiberius Catius Silius Italicus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epic poetry, Latin
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Book Description
Silius (T. Catius Silius Italicus), AD 25-101, was consul in 68 and governor of the province of Asia in 69; he sought no further office but lived thereafter on his estates as a literary man and collector. He revered the work of Cicero, whose Tusculan villa he owned, and that of Virgil, whose tomb at Naples he likewise owned and near which he lived. His epic Punica, in 17 books, on the second War with Carthage (218-202 BC), is based for facts largely on Livy's account. Conceived as a contrast between two great nations (and their supporting gods), championed by the two great heroes Scipio and Hannibal, his poem is written in pure Latin and smooth verse filled throughout with echoes of Virgil above all (and other poets); it exploits with easy grace, but little genius, all the devices and techniques of traditional Latin epic. -- Jacket.
Punica: Books I-VIII
Author: Tiberius Catius Silius Italicus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epic poetry, Latin
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Book Description
Silius (T. Catius Silius Italicus), AD 25-101, was consul in 68 and governor of the province of Asia in 69; he sought no further office but lived thereafter on his estates as a literary man and collector. He revered the work of Cicero, whose Tusculan villa he owned, and that of Virgil, whose tomb at Naples he likewise owned and near which he lived. His epic Punica, in 17 books, on the second War with Carthage (218-202 BC), is based for facts largely on Livy's account. Conceived as a contrast between two great nations (and their supporting gods), championed by the two great heroes Scipio and Hannibal, his poem is written in pure Latin and smooth verse filled throughout with echoes of Virgil above all (and other poets); it exploits with easy grace, but little genius, all the devices and techniques of traditional Latin epic. -- Jacket.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epic poetry, Latin
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Book Description
Silius (T. Catius Silius Italicus), AD 25-101, was consul in 68 and governor of the province of Asia in 69; he sought no further office but lived thereafter on his estates as a literary man and collector. He revered the work of Cicero, whose Tusculan villa he owned, and that of Virgil, whose tomb at Naples he likewise owned and near which he lived. His epic Punica, in 17 books, on the second War with Carthage (218-202 BC), is based for facts largely on Livy's account. Conceived as a contrast between two great nations (and their supporting gods), championed by the two great heroes Scipio and Hannibal, his poem is written in pure Latin and smooth verse filled throughout with echoes of Virgil above all (and other poets); it exploits with easy grace, but little genius, all the devices and techniques of traditional Latin epic. -- Jacket.
A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 7
Author: R. Joy Littlewood
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199570935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Once stigmatized as 'the worst epic ever written', Silius Italicus' Punica is now the focus of a resurgence of critical interest and wide-ranging positive reappraisal. In a climate of flourishing interest in Flavian literary culture, Punica 7 now joins the rising number of commentaries on Flavian epic. While offering an insightful analysis of Silius' complex intertextuality, Littlewood demonstrates how his republican theme bears the imprint of Rome's more recent experience of civil conflict and the military and civic ethos of the Flavians, and illuminates the poet's engagement with luxuria, exploring tensions within the literary and political culture of the Age of Domitian. The narrative of Punica 7 is a tale of treachery and perseverance, of a battle of wills and the desecration of the Italian land, which is poetically interpreted through intertextual allusion to Virgil's Georgics. In the centre of the book Hannibal commits the anti-pastoral atrocity of igniting 2000 Roman ploughing oxen to simulate a nocturnal raid based on Homer's Doloneia. The burning flesh of this subverted sacrifice, interwoven with imagery evoking bacchanal madness and the rising smoke of the sack of Troy, sets the stage for a dramatic finale in which Rome's traditional virtues triumph over oriental guile and internal discord. This penetrating study explores how the historical narrative coalesces with mythology, the proto-history of Rome, and the genealogy of its protagonists. Littlewood's volume is the first full English commentary on a book of Silius Italicus' Punica and is supported by an extended introduction covering Silius' life, his literary models, the characterization of his protagonists, Fabius and Hannibal, his epic style, and the transmission of the text.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199570935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Once stigmatized as 'the worst epic ever written', Silius Italicus' Punica is now the focus of a resurgence of critical interest and wide-ranging positive reappraisal. In a climate of flourishing interest in Flavian literary culture, Punica 7 now joins the rising number of commentaries on Flavian epic. While offering an insightful analysis of Silius' complex intertextuality, Littlewood demonstrates how his republican theme bears the imprint of Rome's more recent experience of civil conflict and the military and civic ethos of the Flavians, and illuminates the poet's engagement with luxuria, exploring tensions within the literary and political culture of the Age of Domitian. The narrative of Punica 7 is a tale of treachery and perseverance, of a battle of wills and the desecration of the Italian land, which is poetically interpreted through intertextual allusion to Virgil's Georgics. In the centre of the book Hannibal commits the anti-pastoral atrocity of igniting 2000 Roman ploughing oxen to simulate a nocturnal raid based on Homer's Doloneia. The burning flesh of this subverted sacrifice, interwoven with imagery evoking bacchanal madness and the rising smoke of the sack of Troy, sets the stage for a dramatic finale in which Rome's traditional virtues triumph over oriental guile and internal discord. This penetrating study explores how the historical narrative coalesces with mythology, the proto-history of Rome, and the genealogy of its protagonists. Littlewood's volume is the first full English commentary on a book of Silius Italicus' Punica and is supported by an extended introduction covering Silius' life, his literary models, the characterization of his protagonists, Fabius and Hannibal, his epic style, and the transmission of the text.
Brill's Companion to Silius Italicus
Author: Antony Augoustakis
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004217118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 534
Book Description
Only recently have scholars turned their attention to Silius Italicus' Punica, a poem the reputation of which was eclipsed by the emergence of Virgil’s Aeneid as the canonical Latin epos of Augustan Rome. This collection of essays aims at examining the importance of Silius' historical epic in Flavian, Domitianic Rome by offering a detailed overview of the poem's context and intertext, its themes and images, and its reception from antiquity through Renaissance and modern philological criticism. This pioneering volume is the first comprehensive, collaborative study on the longest epic poem in Latin literature.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004217118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 534
Book Description
Only recently have scholars turned their attention to Silius Italicus' Punica, a poem the reputation of which was eclipsed by the emergence of Virgil’s Aeneid as the canonical Latin epos of Augustan Rome. This collection of essays aims at examining the importance of Silius' historical epic in Flavian, Domitianic Rome by offering a detailed overview of the poem's context and intertext, its themes and images, and its reception from antiquity through Renaissance and modern philological criticism. This pioneering volume is the first comprehensive, collaborative study on the longest epic poem in Latin literature.
Poetics of the First Punic War
Author: Thomas Biggs
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047213213X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Poetics of the First Punic War investigates the literary afterlives of Rome’s first conflict with Carthage. From its original role in the Middle Republic as the narrative proving ground for epic’s development out of verse historiography, to its striking cultural reuse during the Augustan and Flavian periods, the First Punic War (264–241 BCE) holds an underappreciated place in the history of Latin literature. Because of the serendipitous meeting of historical content and poetic form in the third century BCE, a textualized First Punic War went on to shape the Latin language and its literary genres, the practices and politics of remembering war, popular visions of Rome as a cultural capital, and numerous influential conceptions of Punic North Africa. Poetics of the First Punic War combines innovative theoretical approaches with advances in the philological analysis of Latin literature to reassess the various “texts” of the First Punic War, including those composed by Vergil, Propertius, Horace, and Silius Italicus. This book also contains sustained treatment of Naevius’ fragmentary Bellum Punicum (Punic War) and Livius Andronicus’ Odusia (Odyssey), some of the earliest works of Latin poetry. As the tradition’s primary Roman topic, the First Punic War is forever bound to these poems, which played a decisive role in transmitting an epic view of history.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047213213X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Poetics of the First Punic War investigates the literary afterlives of Rome’s first conflict with Carthage. From its original role in the Middle Republic as the narrative proving ground for epic’s development out of verse historiography, to its striking cultural reuse during the Augustan and Flavian periods, the First Punic War (264–241 BCE) holds an underappreciated place in the history of Latin literature. Because of the serendipitous meeting of historical content and poetic form in the third century BCE, a textualized First Punic War went on to shape the Latin language and its literary genres, the practices and politics of remembering war, popular visions of Rome as a cultural capital, and numerous influential conceptions of Punic North Africa. Poetics of the First Punic War combines innovative theoretical approaches with advances in the philological analysis of Latin literature to reassess the various “texts” of the First Punic War, including those composed by Vergil, Propertius, Horace, and Silius Italicus. This book also contains sustained treatment of Naevius’ fragmentary Bellum Punicum (Punic War) and Livius Andronicus’ Odusia (Odyssey), some of the earliest works of Latin poetry. As the tradition’s primary Roman topic, the First Punic War is forever bound to these poems, which played a decisive role in transmitting an epic view of history.
Abused Bodies in Roman Epic
Author: Andrew M. McClellan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108482627
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
The first full study of corpse mistreatment and funeral violation in Greco-Roman epic poetry, illuminating many major texts.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108482627
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
The first full study of corpse mistreatment and funeral violation in Greco-Roman epic poetry, illuminating many major texts.
A Commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 10
Author: R. Joy Littlewood
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780198713814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The Battle of Cannae represents a conflict of mighty powers and a crushing defeat, notoriously the worst in Rome's history. Dawn on August 2, 216 BC, saw the armies of Rome and Carthage clash in what the participants hoped would be the decisive engagement for supremacy in Mediterranean trade and empire. Punica 10 opens with the final phase of the battle, when there lingered no hope of victory in the Roman ranks. The military narrative moves mercilessly through the aristeia and death of the heroic consul, Paulus, to the ghastly tableau of Roman defeat. But the mystique of Cannae lies in a paradox: that the army ignominiously vanquished emerges the ultimate victor. Although night falls on a battlefield littered with the wreckage of Rome's military might and a triumphant victor still unsated with Roman blood, the second half of the book unfolds a sequence of unexpected twists in the action which destabilize Hannibal's confidence and initiate acts of heroism inspiring fresh resolution in the traumatized Romans. In one of Silius' finest books, the climactic sweep of his epic is enriched by intertextual allusions to Virgil's great narrative of epic closure: Aeneid 12. In contrast to her earlier commentary on Punica 7, which explores intertexts associated with Hannibal's desecration of rural Italy, R. Joy Littlewood's new commentary focuses on Silius' military narrative; the poetics of defeat with its imagery of shipwreck and the spectacle of death in the Roman amphitheatre. It aims to show how a poet with long experience in politics as a senior senator in the first century CE interpreted Rome's historic disaster and eventual triumph in the light of his own experiences of civil war and a swift succession of Roman emperors. Presented here alongside the Latin text and translation, and supplemented with plans of the battlefield, this commentary offers both philological and stylistic exegesis alongside historical analysis and up to date literary criticism. It is accompanied by an extended introduction including analyses of Silius' adaptation of Livy's Cannae narrative, of the contrasting moral strengths of his three Roman heroes, and of the ideas contained in the intertextually rich, exemplary epigram which closes Book 10.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780198713814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The Battle of Cannae represents a conflict of mighty powers and a crushing defeat, notoriously the worst in Rome's history. Dawn on August 2, 216 BC, saw the armies of Rome and Carthage clash in what the participants hoped would be the decisive engagement for supremacy in Mediterranean trade and empire. Punica 10 opens with the final phase of the battle, when there lingered no hope of victory in the Roman ranks. The military narrative moves mercilessly through the aristeia and death of the heroic consul, Paulus, to the ghastly tableau of Roman defeat. But the mystique of Cannae lies in a paradox: that the army ignominiously vanquished emerges the ultimate victor. Although night falls on a battlefield littered with the wreckage of Rome's military might and a triumphant victor still unsated with Roman blood, the second half of the book unfolds a sequence of unexpected twists in the action which destabilize Hannibal's confidence and initiate acts of heroism inspiring fresh resolution in the traumatized Romans. In one of Silius' finest books, the climactic sweep of his epic is enriched by intertextual allusions to Virgil's great narrative of epic closure: Aeneid 12. In contrast to her earlier commentary on Punica 7, which explores intertexts associated with Hannibal's desecration of rural Italy, R. Joy Littlewood's new commentary focuses on Silius' military narrative; the poetics of defeat with its imagery of shipwreck and the spectacle of death in the Roman amphitheatre. It aims to show how a poet with long experience in politics as a senior senator in the first century CE interpreted Rome's historic disaster and eventual triumph in the light of his own experiences of civil war and a swift succession of Roman emperors. Presented here alongside the Latin text and translation, and supplemented with plans of the battlefield, this commentary offers both philological and stylistic exegesis alongside historical analysis and up to date literary criticism. It is accompanied by an extended introduction including analyses of Silius' adaptation of Livy's Cannae narrative, of the contrasting moral strengths of his three Roman heroes, and of the ideas contained in the intertextually rich, exemplary epigram which closes Book 10.
Motherhood and the Other
Author: Antony Augoustakis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199584419
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
In this pioneering study, Antony Augoustakis reconstructs the role of women in the epic poems of the Flavian period of Latin literature, examining the role of female characters from the perspective of Julia Kristeva's theories on foreign otherness and motherhood.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199584419
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
In this pioneering study, Antony Augoustakis reconstructs the role of women in the epic poems of the Flavian period of Latin literature, examining the role of female characters from the perspective of Julia Kristeva's theories on foreign otherness and motherhood.
Archimedes and the Roman Imagination
Author: Mary Jaeger
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472025325
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 251
Book Description
The great mathematician Archimedes, a Sicilian Greek whose machines defended Syracuse against the Romans during the Second Punic War, was killed by a Roman after the city fell, yet it is largely Roman sources, and Greek texts aimed at Roman audiences, that preserve the stories about him. Archimedes' story, Mary Jaeger argues, thus becomes a locus where writers explore the intersection of Greek and Roman culture, and as such it plays an important role in Roman self-definition. Jaeger uses the biography of Archimedes as a hermeneutic tool, providing insight into the construction of the traditional historical narrative about the Roman conquest of the Greek world and the Greek cultural invasion of Rome. By breaking down the narrative of Archimedes' life and examining how the various anecdotes that comprise it are embedded in their contexts, the book offers fresh readings of passages from both well-known and less-studied authors, including Polybius, Cicero, Livy, Vitruvius, Plutarch, Silius Italicus, Valerius Maximus, Johannes Tzetzes, and Petrarch. "Jaeger, in her meticulous and elegant study of different ancient accounts of his life and inventions...reveal more about how the Romans thought about their conquest of the Greek world than about 'science'." ---Helen King, Times Literary Supplement "An absolutely wonderful book on a truly original and important topic. As Jaeger explores neglected texts that together tell an important story about the Romans' views of empire and their relationship to Greek cultural accomplishments, so she has written an important new chapter in the history of science. A genuine pleasure to read, from first page to last." ---Andrew Feldherr, Associate Professor of Classics, Princeton University "This elegantly written and convincingly argued project analyzes Archimedes as a vehicle for reception of the Classics, as a figure for loss and recovery of cultural memory, and as a metaphorical representation of the development of Roman identity. Jaeger's fastening on the still relatively obscure figure of the greatest ancient mathematician as a way of understanding cultural liminality in the ancient world is nothing short of a stroke of genius." ---Christina S. Kraus, Professor and Chair of Classics, Yale University "Archimedes and the Roman Imagination forms a useful addition to our understanding of Roman culture as well as of the reception of science in antiquity. It will make a genuine contribution to the discipline, not only in terms of its original interpretative claims but also as a fascinating example of how we may follow the cultural reception of historical figures." ---Reviel Netz, Professor of Classics, Stanford University Cover art: Benjamin West. Cicero Discovering the Tomb of Archimedes. Yale University Art Gallery. John Hill Morgan, B.A. 1893, LL.B. 1898, M.A. (Hon.) 1929, Fund.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472025325
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 251
Book Description
The great mathematician Archimedes, a Sicilian Greek whose machines defended Syracuse against the Romans during the Second Punic War, was killed by a Roman after the city fell, yet it is largely Roman sources, and Greek texts aimed at Roman audiences, that preserve the stories about him. Archimedes' story, Mary Jaeger argues, thus becomes a locus where writers explore the intersection of Greek and Roman culture, and as such it plays an important role in Roman self-definition. Jaeger uses the biography of Archimedes as a hermeneutic tool, providing insight into the construction of the traditional historical narrative about the Roman conquest of the Greek world and the Greek cultural invasion of Rome. By breaking down the narrative of Archimedes' life and examining how the various anecdotes that comprise it are embedded in their contexts, the book offers fresh readings of passages from both well-known and less-studied authors, including Polybius, Cicero, Livy, Vitruvius, Plutarch, Silius Italicus, Valerius Maximus, Johannes Tzetzes, and Petrarch. "Jaeger, in her meticulous and elegant study of different ancient accounts of his life and inventions...reveal more about how the Romans thought about their conquest of the Greek world than about 'science'." ---Helen King, Times Literary Supplement "An absolutely wonderful book on a truly original and important topic. As Jaeger explores neglected texts that together tell an important story about the Romans' views of empire and their relationship to Greek cultural accomplishments, so she has written an important new chapter in the history of science. A genuine pleasure to read, from first page to last." ---Andrew Feldherr, Associate Professor of Classics, Princeton University "This elegantly written and convincingly argued project analyzes Archimedes as a vehicle for reception of the Classics, as a figure for loss and recovery of cultural memory, and as a metaphorical representation of the development of Roman identity. Jaeger's fastening on the still relatively obscure figure of the greatest ancient mathematician as a way of understanding cultural liminality in the ancient world is nothing short of a stroke of genius." ---Christina S. Kraus, Professor and Chair of Classics, Yale University "Archimedes and the Roman Imagination forms a useful addition to our understanding of Roman culture as well as of the reception of science in antiquity. It will make a genuine contribution to the discipline, not only in terms of its original interpretative claims but also as a fascinating example of how we may follow the cultural reception of historical figures." ---Reviel Netz, Professor of Classics, Stanford University Cover art: Benjamin West. Cicero Discovering the Tomb of Archimedes. Yale University Art Gallery. John Hill Morgan, B.A. 1893, LL.B. 1898, M.A. (Hon.) 1929, Fund.
Silius Italicus and the Tradition of the Roman Historical Epos
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004518517
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
The aim of this volume is to study Silius’ poem as an important step in the development of the Roman historical epic tradition. The Punica is analyzed as transitional segment between the beginnings of Roman literature in the Republican age (Naevius and Ennius) and Claudian’s panegyrical epic in late antiquity, shedding light on its ‘inclusiveness’ and its peculiar, internal dialectic between antiquarian taste and problematic actualization. This is an innovative attempt to connect epic poems and authors belonging to different ages, to frame the development of the literary genre, according to its specific aims and interests throughout the centuries.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004518517
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
The aim of this volume is to study Silius’ poem as an important step in the development of the Roman historical epic tradition. The Punica is analyzed as transitional segment between the beginnings of Roman literature in the Republican age (Naevius and Ennius) and Claudian’s panegyrical epic in late antiquity, shedding light on its ‘inclusiveness’ and its peculiar, internal dialectic between antiquarian taste and problematic actualization. This is an innovative attempt to connect epic poems and authors belonging to different ages, to frame the development of the literary genre, according to its specific aims and interests throughout the centuries.
Scipio Africanus
Author: Richard A. Gabriel
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597979988
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 452
Book Description
The world often misunderstands its greatest men while neglecting others entirely. Scipio Africanus, surely the greatest general that Rome produced, suffered both these fates. Today scholars celebrate the importance of Hannibal, even though Scipio defeated the legendary general in the Second Punic War and was the central military figure of his time. In this scholarly and heretofore unmatched military biography of the distinguished Roman soldier, Richard A. Gabriel establishes Scipio's rightful place in military history as the greater of the two generals. Before Scipio, few Romans would have dreamed of empire, and Scipio himself would have regarded such an ambition as a danger to his beloved republic. And yet, paradoxically, Scipio's victories in Spain and Africa enabled Rome to consolidate its hold over Italy and become the dominant power in the western Mediterranean, virtually ensuring a later confrontation with the Greco-Macedonian kingdoms to the east as well as the empire's expansion into North Africa and the Levant. The Roman imperium was being born, and it was Scipio who had sired it. Gabriel draws upon ancient texts, including those from Livy, Polybius, Diodorus, Silius Italicus, and others, as primary sources and examines all additional material available to the modern scholar in French, German, English, and Italian. His book offers a complete bibliography of all extant sources regarding Scipio's life. The result is a rich, detailed, and contextual treatment of the life and career of Scipio Africanus, one of Rome's greatest generals, if not the greatest of them all.
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597979988
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 452
Book Description
The world often misunderstands its greatest men while neglecting others entirely. Scipio Africanus, surely the greatest general that Rome produced, suffered both these fates. Today scholars celebrate the importance of Hannibal, even though Scipio defeated the legendary general in the Second Punic War and was the central military figure of his time. In this scholarly and heretofore unmatched military biography of the distinguished Roman soldier, Richard A. Gabriel establishes Scipio's rightful place in military history as the greater of the two generals. Before Scipio, few Romans would have dreamed of empire, and Scipio himself would have regarded such an ambition as a danger to his beloved republic. And yet, paradoxically, Scipio's victories in Spain and Africa enabled Rome to consolidate its hold over Italy and become the dominant power in the western Mediterranean, virtually ensuring a later confrontation with the Greco-Macedonian kingdoms to the east as well as the empire's expansion into North Africa and the Levant. The Roman imperium was being born, and it was Scipio who had sired it. Gabriel draws upon ancient texts, including those from Livy, Polybius, Diodorus, Silius Italicus, and others, as primary sources and examines all additional material available to the modern scholar in French, German, English, and Italian. His book offers a complete bibliography of all extant sources regarding Scipio's life. The result is a rich, detailed, and contextual treatment of the life and career of Scipio Africanus, one of Rome's greatest generals, if not the greatest of them all.