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Clodia  

Marilyn B. Skinner

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman History and Historiography
During the final decades of the Roman Republic, Clodia, usually designated “Clodia Metelli” to differentiate her from her two like-named sisters, was one of its most prominent and politically involved noblewomen. Eldest of the six children of Ap. Claudius Pulcher, consul in 79 bce, she may have been a product of an earlier marriage and thus a step-sister to her five siblings. Her union with her first cousin Q. Caecilius Metellus Celer resulted in just one known child, their daughter Metella. Like her youngest brother P. Clodius Pulcher, who adopted a radical populist stance, she may have affected the nonelite spelling and pronunciation of the family name “Claudius” to court the goodwill of the masses. In 60 bce, Clodia used her privileges as a consul’s wife to further her brother’s aims, thereby putting herself at odds with her staunchly conservative husband. Through his consular powers, Metellus was able to thwart Clodius’s efforts to seek the office of tribune, but his sudden death in early 59 bce led to rumors that his wife had poisoned him.

Article

Hellenistic poetry at Rome  

D. P. Nelis

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
The influence of Hellenistic Greek poetry on Roman poetry can hardly be overestimated. Latin poetry is from its beginnings based on scholarly appreciation of the literary production of the Greeks, and it was from the perspective of the literary and scholarly activity of the Hellenistic period that the Romans viewed Greek literature as a whole. The fragmentary nature of early Latin poetry means that the first stages of the *reception of Hellenistic poetry at Rome remain obscure. It is possible that *Livius Andronicus employed the work of Hellenistic commentators on Homer in translating the Odyssey and that *Naevius and *Accius knew and imitated the Argonautica of Apollonius. The Annales of *Ennius provides better evidence. When he proclaims his originality, presents himself as dicti studiosus (“a student of language”) proud of his stylistic superiority over his predecessors, and describes his poetic initiation, he has in mind *Callimachus(3)'s Aetia, although the exact nature and extent of his debt remain unclear.

Article

inconsistencies in Latin literature  

Patrick Glauthier

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
26 April 2019
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
  2. Reception

In the context of Latin literature, inconsistency is most often invoked to mean self-contradiction: for example, in the second Georgic, Virgil declares that Italy is blissfully free from snakes, but in the following book, snakes pose a deadly threat to the Italian farmer and his animals. Inconsistency, however, can also describe general ambiguity, lack of unity, factual inaccuracy, and incoherence of almost any kind. A number of historically contingent factors affect how readers recognize and respond to inconsistencies. Ancient criticism of the Homeric poems and the Aeneid often considered inconsistencies flaws, and this tradition has influenced modern thinking about the topic. From the late 20th century onwards, critics have frequently viewed the creation of inconsistency as a deliberate authorial strategy: the reader is exposed to two different realities, and the resulting tension contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. The apparent receptivity of Roman literary culture to inconsistency may imply a worldview that had more in common with quantum mechanics than an Aristotelian universe dominated by the law of non-contradiction.

Article

Sappho, lyric poet, c. 630–c. 570 BCE  

Page duBois

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
The poet Sappho, one of the greatest poets of world literature, a rare example of a woman whose work has survived in appreciable measure from archaic Greece, was celebrated in antiquity as “the tenth Muse” (Anth. Pal. 9.506). The Garland of Meleager, a Hellenistic anthology, includes some verses of Sappho, which the poet calls “few, but roses.” Sappho has long been praised as a superb poet of Eros, capable of subtle and effective evocations of desire and erotic pleasure, especially devoted to Aphrodite, who sends the joys and pains of love. Aphrodite is seen by some as an alter ego to the poet herself. Sappho appeals to her, as the poems voice yearning for an absent object of desire.1 She also invokes the Muses, and the Graces. The erotic poems often recall intimacy; express loss, tender yearning, and homoerotic longing; and create in memory a community bound by pleasure and song, exhibiting great elegance of composition and a sensuous luxury.