“O stolidas hominum mentes, o pectora caeca! Classical Traditions, Indigenous Imagery and Judeo-Christian Ideology in José de Villerías' Guadalupe”
By Bernardo Berruecos (National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM))
José Antonio de Villerías y Roelas (1695-1728), a largely unknown poet from Novohispanic Mexico, composed a highly Vergilian and erudite epic poem in Latin titled Guadalupe. In hexameters and 1752 verses long, it is organized in four books and only available in a manuscript preserved in the National Library of Mexico (Ms. No. 1594).
An Untimely Iliad: Eoban, Virgil, and a Belated First in the History of Homeric Translation
By Massimo Cè (Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
When the German poet Helius Eobanus Hessus published his translation of the Iliad in 1540 after a decade’s worth of work, he became the first person to translate an entire Homeric epic into Latin verse. This significant if surprisingly belated “first” in the history of Homeric translation has not hitherto been adequately contextualized as a product of late Humanism. My paper not only reconstructs Eoban’s translation practice, but also proposes a novel interpretation of his Homeri Ilias as programmatically anachronistic.
Alternative History and Future Fantasy in Juan Latino’s Austriad
By Jonathan Correa-Reyes (The Pennsylvania State University)
Juan Latino, as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Wolff demonstrate (Gates and Wolff 1998), was the first poet of African descent whose work was published in a Western language – in his case, Latin. Born into slavery in 1518, Latino eventually attained freedom and became a Professor of Latin Grammar at the Cathedral School in Granada. Latino’s prominence was not restricted to his tenure of this position in Granada, since, as a poet, he also enjoyed the patronage of prominent figures in early modern Spain, among which we find King Philip II.
Vergilian Divine Machinery in Thomas Campion’s De Pulverea Coniuratione
By Stephen Harrison (University of Oxford)
In 1987 David Lindley and Robin Sowerby published the first edition of a neo-Latin mini-epic in two books on the 1605 London Gunpowder Plot by the musician, physician and poet Thomas Campion (1567-1620), De Pulverea Coniuratione, probably written in 1612-13 and now extant in a single contemporary MS in the library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
How to Make Aeneas a Queen? Heroines in Neo-Latin Epic Poetry
By Florian Schaffenrath (Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Neulateinische Studien, University Innsbruck)
Considering ancient epic poetry, the protagonists of these poems were always men: Achilles (Iliad), Ulisses (Odyssey), Aeneas (Aeneid), Caesar and Pompeius (Pharsalia), Scipio (Punica) are only the best-known examples. The protagonists of Neo-Latin epic poems were also usually men whose portrayal—especially from the sixteenth century onwards—was very much based on Virgil’s portrayal of Aeneas.
Rivers as Symbols of Power in Neo-Latin Epic: The Case of Medici Panegyrics
By Louis Verreth (Leiden University)
Of all rivers Ovid mentions being dried up by Phaëton on his hapless ride with the chariot of the sun, only the Roman Tiber is said to be the destined ruler of the world. Similarly, in Claudian’s panegyrical epic for Probinus and Olybrius, consuls of 395 AD, the personified Tiber boasts that a foreign river has never witnessed such eminent rulers. In Neo-Latin epic, much like in classical epic, rivers are often symbols of national identities, that can be compared with other streams in terms of reach and power.