Vision and Perspective in Latin Literature

The recent surge of interest in Greek epigram has brought new attention to the ‘forgotten’ Greek poets who lived and wrote under the Roman empire (Nisbet 2003, e.g.). As a result, we are beginning to understand more clearly the “intertextual matrix of genres” that connected Greek and Latin literary cultures in the early imperial period (Gutzwiller 2005, ). My goal in this paper is to contribute to this growing understanding by reading a selection of Martial’s ekphrastic epigrams with and against those written by the Roman poet’s Greek contemporaries.

In this essay we examine how Juvenal’s eighth satire employs echoes of Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and Tacitus’ Agricola in order to bring the contemporary moral and social landscape into sharp relief. Each of these texts leads the reader to imagine noble ancestors who gaze at their descendants, whether from celestial habitations, funerary masks, or statuary (Somn.13, 19; Agr. 46.1-3, Sat. 8.1-18).

Among the basic questions interpreters of Horace Odes 4.12 must wrestle with is whether the Vergilius it addresses is or is not identical to the famous Augustan poet, and how to account for its abrupt shifts in tone from one stanza to the next. This paper supports the view now shared by most scholars (see most recently Thomas 2011, 226-7) that the addressee is indeed the epic poet, and builds upon the suggestion of Clay 2002 that the ode invites poet to come, as if from the realm of the dead, for a drink.

Propertian elegy provides a window into, and ironic commentary on, Rome’s complex relation to Hellenic culture and the phenomenon of “philhellenism” as a consequence of Romanization. Propertius 3.21 and 3.22, poems that make up part of a closing sequence in the lover-poet’s affair with Cynthia, present two of the many faces of Rome’s relationship to Greece and the Hellenized Mediterranean at large—cultural dependency and absorption, commingled with military dominance and expansion.

Propertius’ Elegy 3.6 has been a source of puzzlement and controversy among Classicists for centuries due to difficulties in the manuscript tradition and the complicated voice of the narrator. This paper will apply a narratological approach of the poem in order to argue for the presence of the lover’s voice throughout.