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• Empire and invention: the Elder Pliny's heurematology ("Nat." VII 191–215)

  123–135

  Marco Romani Mistrella

  Views:

  135

  This paper focuses on the catalog of inventions and inventors that concludes book VII of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (Nat. VII 191-215). While the list is certainly a fundamental source for the largely lost tradition of Greek invention-catalogs, the literary, rhetorical, and intellectual-historical importance of Pliny’s heurematography has, to date, rarely been appreciated for its own merits. I argue that, in spite of the seemingly irregular and heterogeneous character of the catalog, the underlying rhetorical strategy of Pliny’s heurematography allows the list to become a teleological narrative. As I argue, Pliny’s main goal is to show the Romans’ historical merit in unifying the whole Mediterranean world through the appropriation of its cultural and technological patrimony.

• When elephants weap.: Plin., Nat. 8, 20-21

  75–88

  Ágnes Darab

  Views:

  82

  The literature of classical antiquity has lost much of its attraction, and the circle of its possible readers has been narrowed significantly. Even in literary criticism that reaches beyond classical philology, its position has dwindled to a source of motifs, topics, archetypes, and we clearly lack such interpretations as would present ancient literature from an angle that would appeal to the readers of our age. This paper is devoted to an analysis of the 20th and the 21st chapters of the zoological part (book 8) of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia. Through a comparative interpretation that is attentive to the cultural-medial aspects of the textual locus, the essay provides a paradigm for uncovering the meaning – which would appeal to readers in the 21st century – in ancient texts with the help of different methodological perspectives, in this case the simultaneous application of narratological and comparative approaches.

• The Death of the actor: Marcus Ofilius Hilarius. Plin. NH VII 184–185

  139–147

  Ágnes Darab

  Views:

  26

  The name of Marcus Ofilius Hilarius occurs in no other source besides book VII of Pliny’s encyclopaedia. With this in mind, the narrative giving an extensive account of the death of the actor needs further explanation. The present paper takes a look at the narrower and broader context of this detail, which lends the story a meaning and a structuring function within the Naturalis Historia. This inquiry enables us to draw certain conclusions not only about book VII, but the whole encyclopedia as well.

• Lebensbeschreibungen der berühmtesten Maler, Bildhauer und Architekten. Antike Künstleranekdoten

  73–93

  Ágnes Darab

  Views:

  46

  The main source of the anecdotes about ancient painters, sculptors and architects is the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. The article focuses on the shaping of these stories from more approaches. The basis is the theory of the cultural memory. To broaden the scope of the analysis, Pliny's representation of the artists is compared with relevant passages from other writers. The paper determines the ancient types of the anecdotes of artist and tries to show the connection between the content and the age in which they were born.