Articles

• Phoenician Vengeance: Dido, Anna, and the Lore of the Numicus

  5–19.

  Lee Fratantuono

  Views:

  112

  Scholarly attention has been paid to the depiction of the Carthaginian sisters Dido and Anna, particularly in Virgil’s fourth Aeneid. Close attention to the later portrayals of Anna in Ovid (Fasti 3) and Silius Italicus (Punica 8) reveals a portrayal of Dido’s sister as the unwitting agent of the fulfillment of the queen’s curse against Aeneas. The hitherto unappreciated connection between the festival of Anna Perenna and the date of the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar may be seen in light of Dido’s curse on Aeneas and the Julian gens descended from his son Iulus.

• The early reception of the inconsistency between the two Palinurus episodes in Virgil’s Aeneid

  21–42.

  Dániel Kozák

  Views:

  70

  The paper investigates how ancient commentators and Roman poets recognized and reacted to the inconsistency between the two Palinurus episodes in Virgil’s Aeneid (5,833-871 and 6,337-383). First, I discuss how Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus, in their notes on 6,348, remove the inconsistency (regarding divine intervention) by assuming a punctuation different from the one adopted by all modern editors; however, while doing so, they both give rise to another inconsistency between Aeneas’ question and Palinurus’ answer. Second, I examine a passage from Statius’ biography of his father (Silvae 5,3,124–132), where the poet alludes to the Virgilian story apparently according to the version we read in Aeneid 6, but also creatively reproduces some elements of the Virgilian inconsistency. The last text discussed is Ovid’s Remedia amoris, where the poet recalls his vision of Amor Lethaeus at the temple of Venus Erycina; here again, elements of the Virgilian inconsistency are reproduced.

• Waiting for the Sybil (Vergilius: Aeneis 6,14–41)

  43–53.

  Ágnes Darab

  Views:

  72

  The sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid stands out from the text because it is the crystallization of the structural and allusive procedures that organize the text. The narrative of the founding myth of the Temple of Apollo in Cumae and the description of the reliefs decorating the temple’s gate, with the figure of the mythical architect-inventor-sculptor Daedalus in the center (6,14–41), were placed at a highlighted position within the key sixth book: at the beginning. Aeneid philology interprets the temple scene of the sixth book mostly from the point of view of ekphrasis, more precisely in connection with the other ekphrases in the Aeneid. In my paper, I will not concentrate on the interpretation of Daedalus’ reliefs, but on the entirety of the Cumae scene. Specifically from the perspective of the roles, I shall examine the layers of meaning that can be formed in the textual space of Aeneid around Aeneas’ scrutiny of the image during the time of waiting and around the narrator’s description of the image.

• The Haughty Soul of the Avenger: The Myth of Lucius Brutus in the Aeneid (6,817–823)

  55–71.

  Ádám Rung

  Views:

  51

  In Book 6 of the Aeneid, Virgil constructs his own version of an epic Underworld and, innovatively, combines it with a panoply of future Roman heroes. This article focuses on the laconic introduction given to one of these heroes, Lucius Iunius Brutus, the founding father of the Roman Republic. More specifically, it examines the opening lines of a striking passage that, in an act of diction that has puzzled readers since antiquity, applies the adjective superbus to Brutus, rather than to his adversary, Tarquin the Proud, whose cognomen bears precisely this meaning. To interpret these lines, the article will attempt—using other literary versions of the work combined with comparative material from similar narratives—to reconstruct the traditional story of Brutus as it was known to Virgil and his contemporaries to determine, firstly, if this elucidates what such a retelling would have meant to the Augustan reader and, secondly, what its possible political and cultural implications would be if read with the traditional myth in mind.

• Catullan Labyrinths in Vergilian Ecphrasis

  73–99.

  Péter Somfai

  Views:

  61

  This study aims to investigate the intertextual connections of the labyrinth passage of Catullus 64 and the ecphraseis of Book 6 and 8 of Vergil’s Aeneid. The ecphrastic nature of these passages provides an opportunity to analyze the relations of these texts by taking the phenomenon of intermediality into consideration. In addition, my objective is to examine the role of ecphraseis within the narratives of Catullus 64 and the Aeneid, and to analyze how the poetic and thematic dimensions of the depicted artworks extend to the framing texts, which can thus be interpreted as peculiar labyrinths, that of a textual kind. Bearing in mind that ecphraseis can provide an interpretative framework for their wider context, it may be of critical significance that the labyrinth gets evoked in those books of the Aeneid that focus on Roman history in close connection with Augustan ideology.

• Et Latrator Anubis: Egypt and Egyptian Deities in the Aeneid

  101–118.

  Lee Fratantuono

  Views:

  70

  Egypt and Egyptian deities play an important role in Virgil’s Aeneid, in which the epic poet celebrates the contemporary victory of Augustus over the forces of Cleopatra and her lover Antony. Close consideration of all the references to res Aegyptiacae in the poem reveals that Egyptian lore is important not only for the Virgilian hommage to Actium, but also for influencing the reader’s interpretation of the final scene in Book 12 between Aeneas and Turnus.

• Camilla and the Dresses

  119–132.

  Attila Ferenczi

  Views:

  53

  This article aims to create a context around a single line of the Aeneid. The narrator's statement narrating Camilla's death (femineo predae et spoliorum ardebat amore 11,782) is traditionally understood as prejudiced against women and does not quite fit with the earlier portrayal of Camilla's figure. The paper will argue that, on the one hand, the interpretation of the line is not as clear-cut as it may seem at first sight, and on the other hand, that the motivation attributed to Camilla by this statement contains an element that is quite unique in the Aeneid, and is characterised by ambivalence of values rather than by a clear rejection of her morality. The analysis tries to interpret the whole sentence through the nature of the spoils (praeda) mentioned in the sentence. By comparing Camilla's appearance and the clothing of her opponents in battle, it seeks to formulate connections between the different characters in the story.

• Saevus, Superbus - On the Use of Words by Horace and Virgil

  133–145.

  Flóra Imre

  Views:

  50

  This paper deals with Horace’s and Virgil’s use of two terms, saevus and superbus. On the basis of statistical and connotation studies, the paper concludes that, compared to contemporary poets, the use of these terms is slightly more frequent in both authors, and that they often appear in texts in contexts that give rise to surprising meanings: in the Aeneid on the relationship between the figure of Iuno and Aeneas, and in Horace’s carmina in relation to the Augustan regime. The text argues for a pessimistic reading of both authors.

• Aeneas at the Europa Hotel: Canon and Nostalgia in Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s Novel Grand Hotel Europa

  147–157.

  József Krupp

  Views:

  72

  Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s novel Grand Hotel Europa (2018), through its explicit and structural references to the Aeneid, not only affirms the canonical status of Virgil’s poem but also raises fundamental questions about the significance of cultural traditions in general. The novel emphasises Aeneas’ status as profugus, connecting him to Europe’s refugee crisis during the 2010s. This essay examines the intertextual character of the novel and the concept of ‘nostalgia’, which proves to be central to its vision of European culture.

• Textkritische und interpretatorische Überlegungen zu Catull. 55,9-12

  161–170.

  Heiko Ullrich

  Views:

  66

  Since the apparently corrupt passages in Catull. 55,9 and 11 respectively now hide the identity of the pessimae puellae in 55,10 a solution to the porblem is proposed by interpreting Ellis' reducta pectus in 11 as a description of a certain statue that may be that of the Greek poet Anyte or Telesilla, present in Pompey's portico according to the testimony of Tatian, whose names now hide behind the corrupt auelte sic ipse and could be restored to the direct address A Anyte et Telesilla.

• A Note on Ciris 218

  171–172.

  Włodzimierz Olszaniec

  Views:

  65

  This article contains a suggestion concerning the Ciris. The author tries to explain the reasons for the corruption in verse 218 and offers a tentative solution.

• Sopra l’institutio philosophica di Vitruvio: l’apporto concettuale e pratico della filosofia nel De architectura

  173–185.

  Tiziano Ottobrini

  Views:

  65

  The essay aims to point out organically the contribution of philosophical sources within Vitruvius’ De architectura; both the explicit and implicit references to Greek philosophy will be taken into account, showing not only the two philosophical fields involved in the treatise (physics and ethics) but also, for the first time, the relationship between them: the moral improvement of man is parallel to the better knowledge of nature and both are the basis for the full exercise of the architect’s ars.

• Hermes/Mercury Depictions on Anatolian Glyptics

  187–231.

  Ergün Laflı

  Martin Henig

  Views:

  98

  The study conducts an iconographic analysis of Hermes/Mercury representations on gems discovered in Anatolia and preserved in the local museums of modern Turkey. The aim is to compile an iconographic corpus primarily of “Fundgemmen” on which Hermes is the main or only figure. Most of the gems presented here date from the second and third centuries AD. The research examines a total of 31 gems, which the authors classify into seven distinct types. Their final conclusion indicates that while certain types exhibit specific characteristics, no distinctly Anatolian representation type can be established. So interesting working on a type that iconographically is so similar over the Empire though doubtless had many local characteristics and names.