Traditions and Innovations in Literature

Aeschylus’ lost tragedy Aetnaeans (written in the late 470s) celebrates Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, and his colonial foundation of Aetna but also, surprisingly, highlights a pair of indigenous Sicilian deities, the Palici. One prominent interpretation (Dougherty, Bonanno, Morgan) has argued that the Aetnaeans participates in a strategy of “cultural imperialism,” through which Greeks take possession of the indigenous deities, familiarize and Hellenize them, and thereby demonstrate their cultural superiority over the Sikels.

Despite the absence of concrete textual evidence for satyric drama in Rome there are several indirect testimonies of the cultivation of the satyric genre in the Republican period, which include references to satyric productions and titles of satyr plays, while in the Augustan period we find in Horace’s Ars Poetica (220-250) the most important theoretical treatment of satyr play in the ancient world (Wiseman 1988; Shaw 2014).

The influence of the Sophists on New Music has recently become more recognized (e.g. LeVen 2014; Fearn forthcoming). This relationship not only sheds light on the aesthetics of New Music, but also its politics. There has been a tendency in the scholarship to downplay the inherent politics of New Music. For instance, Eric Csapo writes, “It would be difficult to argue that politics motivated New Music in any fundamental way…The poets and musicians were mainly interested in exploring the potentialities of musical form” (Csapo 2004: 229).

This paper challenges two prominent trends in Lucretian scholarship: the use of the De rerum natura as a reliable source for Epicurean orthodoxy, and the related view of the DRN as a poem whose “meaning” is solely one of Epicurean persuasion and whose inconsistencies can be explained away in furtherance of this goal. The former position is articulated most forcefully by Sedley 1998, who argues that Lucretius is a “fundamentalist,” following Epicurus’ On Nature with little divergence.

Thoughtful preservation of traditional elements is not commonly associated with fourth-century tragedy. Aristotle speaks of development, often implying decline, while modern scholars have either believed his verdict (and the image created in Ar. Frogs) or highlighted the innovative power of post-classical tragedians like Astydamas II and Carcinus II (Taplin 2009; 2014: 147-53; cf. already Webster 1954).

That Jean Racine was an avid reader of ancient literature is well known (Forestier, Knight, Phillippo), but underappreciated is the way he adapts the allusive techniques employed by Roman poets. Just as Ovid’s Ariadne self-consciously alludes to Catullus’ Ariadne, Racine's characters become 'readers' of ancient works and act and speak with reference to their predecessor-selves. In Andromaque (1667), the French poet employs this technique to great effect during the climactic confrontation between Andromaque and Pyrrhus.