Augustan Poetry

In this paper, I argue that Propertius’ programmatic opening to his second book does not merely position him as a newly public figure (Colaizzi, Greene), but draws a comparison with Augustus and examines the powers and limitations of both men in shaping the public narratives of their lives.

The ship race off the western coast of Sicily that dominates the funeral games for Anchises in Aeneid 5 (114-285) has long invited a range of interpretations beyond the intertextual.

During Anchises’ funeral games in Aeneid 5, the helmsman Menoetes is thrown overboard by his captain, Gyas. Nearly drowning, he struggles to shore, to the laughter of Trojan spectators (5.159–82). Menoetes’ predicament has attracted little attention besides comparison to Palinurus’ fall (e.g., Putnam, Köves-Zulauf, Fratantuono and Smith).

Through the mid-20s B.C.E., the god Amor becomes intertwined with cultural and political developments in Rome. Amidst the growing rhetoric of Pax Augusta and Aurea Aetas, this “Augustan Amor” comes to represent peace and abundance. In this paper I argue that two well-known works, the Algiers relief and Propertius 3.5, engage with this figure from different perspectives, revealing an ongoing debate (cf. Pandey) over Amor’s new role.

In the first Georgic, Vergil aligns space with literary signification—that is, he equates textual marking with the marking of the land. This paper examines how Vergil uses the metaphor of spatial limits to shed light on his readers’ own interpretive practices as they engage with wordplay at the edges of the poem’s lines.

This paper argues that Ovid’s commemoration of the Ara Pacis Augustae at Fasti 1.709–22 engages substantively with the monument’s iconography. The passage has been taken to encapsulate the official meaning of the Ara (e.g. Settis) or ‘to offer insight into what the Ara Pacis might come to symbolize . . .