Latin Epic (organized by the American Classical League)

Augustan poetry (and Vergil’s Aeneid in particular) has been thoroughly located in
its historical context in recent scholarship, but the historical contexts of the Aeneid’s
descendants have often been undervalued when their intertexts with Vergil’s work
are discussed. While the Silvae are often read as products of the dynamic between
the poet and Domitian (Newlands 2010), studies of the Thebaid’s politics have
focused on anxieties around succession (Rebeggiani 2013, Rosati 1990) rather than

In the de Rerum Natura, Lucretius describes his mission in terms of dispelling the shadows of ignorance that cloud human knowledge and bring fear to the minds of men (DRN 1.146-7). His account, he tells us, is designed to reveal what has true value in the contemporary world. In this, Lucretius’ philosopher-hero, Epicurus, provides the guiding light that will push through the dark boundaries of human ignorance: e tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen/ qui primus potuisti inlustrans commoda vitae (DRN 3.1-2).

The Massilian grove in book three of Lucan’s Bellum Civile contains many preternatural elements that present a haunting place, a true locus horridus (Schiesaro 2006). Among these elements are serpents twining around the trunks of trees and hollow, echoing subterranean caverns. The grove is a sublime object: dark, terrifying, and obscure (Day 2013, Leigh 2010). Its gloom and mysterious nature are reminiscent of the ambiguous perception of caves (Ustinova 2009), themselves dark and obscure places.

Stephen Hinds, in the aptly titled “Ovid’s Aeneid (and Virgil’s Metamorphoses),” suggests that Ovid’s recognition of a “Metamorphoses latent in the Aeneid” fuels his self-conscious attempt to gather, perfect, and systematize the myths presented by Vergil (Hinds 1998).