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Antulla’s tomb and Martial’s: poetic closure in book 1
41–56Views:164The final seven epigrams of Martial’s Book 1 form a subtle but important closural sequence (epigrams 1.112-1.118 inclusive). Despite their great variatio of topics, the seven epigrams are linked through concerns about the boundary between life and death, the integrity of a monument, and the theme of dignus legi, or what makes someone “worthy of being read.” Through a series of close readings, this article argues for the coherence of this sequence on formal, thematic, and verbal grounds. The sequence is centered on a pair of epigrams on the kepotaphion or tomb-garden of a young girl named Antulla (1.114 and 1.116). The function of this closural sequence is both formal, to bring closure to a disparate collection of epigrams, and thematic, to reprise themes from the mock-epitaph with which Martial opens book 1 (1.1).
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Waiting for the Sybil (Vergilius: Aeneis 6,14–41)
43–53.Views:142The 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.