Allusion and Intertext

In this paper, I propose a new answer to a question first raised by Horace himself: To what one form can both the head and the foot of the Ars Poetica be related? Some (e.g., Oliensis (1998)) have argued that the opening and close of Horace’s epistle cannot, in fact, be related to a single form, and that the end of the Ars simply repeats the trajectory of the painting at its beginning. More recently, others (e.g., Hardie (2018) and Hunter (forthcoming)) have suggested that it is Empedocles who links the poem’s beginning to its end.

The genre of ancient epic is characterized by repetition, including oral-formulaic lexical repetition and its imitation in written epics, as well as authorial competition with and emulation of earlier epic texts (Fowler 1997; Hinds 1998; Edmunds 2001). This paper forms a part of a larger project that analyzes how epic poets use narrative descriptions of repetition to comment on their own repetitive, “intertextual,” relationship to earlier epic sources.

The surviving text of Seneca’s De Otio opens with a discussion between the speaker and the interlocutor, one of the most common devices in Senecan philosophy (Lavery). Seneca also incorporates one of his other favorite devices, poetic quotation, into the interlocutor’s speech (Dueck). The quote he uses is from the Aeneid, canitiem galea premimus “we press down gray hair with a helmet” (Aen.IX.612, qtd. in Ot.1.4).

Recent additions to our knowledge of Sappho's "Tithonus Poem" (P.Oxy. 1787 fr 1 = F 58 Voigt, ll. 11-26; P.Köln inv. 21351 + 21376, ll. 9-20, ed. Obbink) give us a new opportunity to study how Plato engages with her as his intellectual predecessor in Phaedrus (mention of her: 235c2; earlier discussions: Carson, 123-73; duBois, 85-7; Foley; Fortenbaugh; Pender a, b). I first show how Plato used the Tithonus Poem as an intertext in his myth of the chariot of the soul (esp.

This paper argues that Aristophanes’ Peace and Birds both creatively rework the tragedy Prometheus Bound, and that this intertextual link between the two comedies has large-scale thematic implications: both Trygaios and Peisetairos reshape the world of anthrōpoi in its technological dimension and thus become ‘modern’ Prometheis, albeit of a very different sort.

This paper examines how Roduflus Tortarius’ 12^th-century versification of Valerius Maximus’ Facta et Dicta Memorabilia subtly redacted it, sanitising Greco-Roman antiquity for a Christian readership. Valerius Maximus’ compendium was ‘next to the Bible, the most popular in the Middle Ages’ (Carter 1975). Some 800 manuscripts are extant (Schullian 1984), most dated to the late medieval period at its peak popularity when there was a proliferation of commentaries (Billanovich 1974, Crab 2015).