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When Ovid curses Ibis to “imitate real bullocks with Perillean bronze (aere Perilleo),” he can count on his audience being familiar with the story, already common in the time of Pindar, of the human-sized, bull-shaped cauldron-instrument the sculptor Perillos designed for the tyrant Phalaris of Agrigentum to conceal the agony of his victims as they roasted to death in its belly, converting their cries into mimetic bellows via an invisible system of pipes running through the animal’s head and opening at its nostrils (Ibis 437).

Previous interpretations of the treatment of slavery by Seneca the Younger (Bobzien 1998, 338–45; Roller 2001, 214–33; and Edwards 2009, 139–59), agree on two interrelated claims: first, that Seneca only introduces slavery as a foil to his definition of freedom in Stoic political philosophy (Patterson 1982, 17–34); and second, that Seneca’s treatment of slavery, exemplified by Epistulae Morales 47, is primarily metaphorical and provides little insight into the historical institution of slavery, let alone a critique of it.

This paper offers a quantitative analysis of the reception of Senecan trimeter in four early works of Italian Humanist tragedy, which illuminates the creative possibilities afforded by the basic structure of the meter and identifies specific features important to questions of style and semantics. The four Neo-Latin tragedies, drawn from Grund 2011, represent influential works that date from the early 14th century to mid-15th century and include both historical and mythological subject matter.

Parallels of Anger and Fear in Seneca’s Thyestes

The bizarre figure of Hostius Quadra, for whom mirrors that distort the size of the things they reflect are an object of sexual obsession, has fascinated modern readers of Seneca’s Natural Questions. The viewing experience is crucial to Hostius’ sexual enjoyment; indeed, Seneca devotes a long passage in NQ 1.16 to Hostius’ love of gazing upon the distorted body parts of his sexual partners.

Sermones I.9 ends with a sententious coda after the man who has been pestering Horace all afternoon gets pulled abruptly into court: sic me servavit Apollo (“so Apollo saved me” 78). Porphyrio’s note directs us to Homer: “[Horace] took [his phrase] with that Homeric sense [de illo sensu Homerico] that Lucilius also exhibited [citing fr. Marx 231–2 = 267–8 Warmington]”.

From its first beginnings until the end of antiquity, Latin poetry is always in conversation with Greek.  Yet, even as the lives of Greeks and Romans become ever more connected, Greek poetry remains resolutely Greek.

Plants in Vergilian pastoral have long been read as metapoetic metaphors (see esp. Henkel 2009: 36-169). This is not only because the Greek and Latin words for “tree” and “wood” (ὕλη and materia especially) also denote “matter” in the abstract sense, but also because of various ways in which trees formally resemble poems (grafting and echoes as allusions, shadows as anxieties of influence, and so on). The motif of the poem-tree is epitomized in Ecl.

One of the many poets of the Greek Anthology, the skoptic epigram writer Loukillios has challenged textual critics and literary scholars alike for decades. His name, the pseudo-biographical hints of his poems, and his claim to Neronian patronage all declare his Romanitas; yet his language, his poetry, and his literary context are undeniably Hellenic (Cameron 1993).

This paper presents a new perspective on Epistles 1.2.1-31, where Horace gives Lollius advice about how to read the Homeric epics for their moral value. These lines raise complicated questions and present serious problems. I propose that there is more satire in this epistle than has been recognized. Horace’s guide (6-31) to Homer is best read as a parody of how philosophers and schoolmasters have (mis)used Homer as a teaching tool.