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  • The Presence and Importance of Beauty in the Byzantine Epigrams About the Cross and the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ: Some Basic Observations
    217–230.
    Views:
    176

    Scholar poetry, particularly the epigram, has been a literary means of expression not only of ideas and attitudes about life but also of religious sentiment and profound religious faith. Delving into the epigrams of the second category, particularly those related to the Cross and the Crucifixion, our attention will be focused on the presence of beauty, its meaning, and the role it played within the category of Byzantine epigrams. The aim of this article is to identify relevant epigrams (by anonymous or known writers), make some basic observations and reach certain conclusions regarding the issue of beauty.

  • Byzantine epigrams on the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.: The case of Georgios Pisides
    Views:
    168

    This article is dealing with issues of the Cross alongside the epigrams related to the Crucifixion written by a distinguished Byzantine scholar of the 7th century, Georgios Pisidis, focusing our attention and scope on particular aspects of those epigrams such as the possible influences and impact from literary texts previously and later written and most noticeable motifs.

  • Ennodius und Martial
    195–205
    Views:
    82

    Magnus Felix Ennodius, the bishop of Ticinum (modern Pavia), died in 521. He has left letters, poems, oratorical pieces, saints’ lives and controversial literature. Ennodius’ writings were composed for specific audiences on particular occasions. His Latinity is very literate, syntactically complex, and difficult to understand. He cultivates the short literary forms: letters, panegyrics, declamatory themes (dictiones), short poems, epithalamium, epigrams, epitaphs, hymns. In the preface of his epithalamium for Maximus, he displays the essential qualities of spring with Martial’s vocabulary. This fact directed my attention to the relation of Ennodius to Martial. Comparing Ennodius’s epigrams with Martial’s, I realized that in his epigrams Ennodius imitated Martial both in topics and expressions.

  • Antulla’s tomb and Martial’s: poetic closure in book 1
    41–56
    Views:
    59

    The 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).