[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
Most specialists in late antique literature restrict their work routines to a set of authors in Greek or Latin. This means that we are not up to date on the bibliography of the literature in the other language, do not think of the texts produced in the other language when researching a particular topic, and avoid boundary issues, such as the influence of the Latin half over the Greek half and vice versa. The editors and participants in this book are therefore commendable for their conscious effort to break the divide, and to unpick the particularly knotty question of the presence of the Latin literary tradition in the Greek epic of the imperial world. They are part of a broader trend, visible as well in D. Jolowicz, Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novels, Oxford 2021, and B. Verhelst and T. Scheijnen, Greek and Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2022, which appeared too late to be fully taken into account in the volume under review.
The topic of this volume is a complex one. In terms of language, on the one hand we have openly bilingual figures, such as the Egyptian poet Claudius Claudian; on the other, a limited knowledge of bilingualism, the diffusion of Latin and the teaching of Latin in Greek-speaking areas.[1] Additionally, a high percentage of our sources are Egyptian papyri,[2] which means that evidence is subject to the hazards of conservation (e.g. no papyri from Alexandria are extant) and subject to an ‘Egyptian bias’. We may assume that late antique poets writing in Greek had some knowledge of Latin, but cannot ascertain their linguistic proficiency, nor their knowledge of Latin literature. Nonnus, for instance, makes use of two Hellenised versions of Latin words in his Paraphrase of the Gospel of John,[3] but we cannot conclude that he had enough Latin to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or that he had read them. Most Greek authors in the Roman period keep silent about what they thought about Latin literature,[4] which is often explained as an act of cultural resistance against Roman domination.[5] And there is the question of recognisability: in order to identify a reference to a particular passage of a particular Latin poem in a Greek one we have to cross the linguistic barrier, which invalidates our usual referential strategies. Hence the importance of this book’s exploration of the presence of Latin epic in Greek epic texts, starting on the assumption that Greek poems were necessarily related to Latin poems because of their shared context of production, irrespective of the knowledge a Greek author may have had of a particular Latin poem.
This proposal was road tested by the editors in a panel at the FIEC in London in July 2019, in which Daniel Jolowicz, Philip Hardie and Helen Lovatt took part. The editors then recruited Silvio Bär, Emma Greensmith and Markus Kersten to complete this volume, which offers a paper on Claudian’s Greek Gigantomachy (Carvounis), two on the Posthomerica by Quintus Smyrnaeus (Bär, Greensmith), one on Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy (Scafoglio), one on the Orphic Argonautica (Kersten), and two on Nonnus’ Dionysiaca (Papaioannou, Lovatt). The editors subsequently added a theoretical introduction by Gärtner, to which the rest of the papers rarely refer.
Following on her 2005 book (Quintus Smyrnaeus und die Aeneis, Munich), Gärtner reflects on the methodological approaches to the question of whether and how Greeks dealt with Latin literature in Late Antiquity. Considering that external criteria are not detailed enough for most authors, she focuses on internal criteria and the relationship between Posthomerica and Aeneid: she discusses the referencing of the Aeneid through Quellenforschung as a source, and a structural model; through intertextuality, as a subtext, or, as in this book, starting from the assumption that a relationship necessarily existed because all late antique poets were part of the common cultural context. In this final case the emphasis is not only on the search for parallels but also on the search for differences, which has the additional difficulty of requiring authors and audiences that are familiar with the Latin texts even when there are no markers in the text.
Carvounis offers a comparative analysis of the image of the poet as sailor as elaborated in the proem of Claudian’s Greek Gigantomachia and that of the De Raptu Proserpinae 1. The differences in emphasis illuminate the differences between Greek and Latin metapoetics: the Greek text highlights prizes, performance, victory, and the Muses in the wake of Hesiod, whereas the Latin text elaborates the sailor’s movement away from the shore and the poet’s progression as he ascends to the higher mythological epic, in the wake of the earlier Latin tradition.
Two articles on Quintus of Smyrna address the crux of Vergilian influence on the Posthomerica, both complementing Hadjittofi’s seminal paper on cultural politics in late antique epic.[6] Bär compares the episodes of Sinon and Laocoon in the Posthomerica (12.353–585) and Vergil’s Aeneid (2.13–249) from a narratological perspective and argues that Quintus’ contrastive choices and inversions seek to remove the romanitas from Vergil’s narrative. Vergil’s intradiegetic narration and emphasis on Sinon’s speech come to contrast with QS’ heterodiegetic, omniscient narrator, and emphasis on Sinon’s tortured appearance. Contrary to Vergil’s Laocoon, Quintus’ does not die with his children in the attack of the snakes descending from Typhon (an old Greek motif), but is blinded and weeps at the cenotaph which the Trojans erect for his children. This adds authority and credibility to the primary narration of the Posthomerica.
Greensmith[7] discusses what she calls Quintus’ non- and dis-engagement with Vergil, through her analysis of Calchas’ prophecy about the future glory of Rome (PH 13.333–399) and the description of the testudo (PH 11.358–396). In these two episodes Quintus turns Vergilian motifs into Homeric tropes: Quintus’ Calchas aligns his prophecy with that of Il. 20.300–308 and comments on Aeneas’ filial piety on the back of Odyssean passages. Quintus’ testudo[8] is an Odysseic dolos, a means to predict the success of the Trojan horse and a self-conscious commentary on the poem’s anachronistic technique.
In in the proem and in the episodes of Sinon, Cassandra and Aeneas of Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy, Scafoglio finds traces of a silent dialogue with Aeneid 2 as an unavoidable interlocutor.
As for the Orphic Argonautica, Kersten tackles the questions of the poem’s technique and relation to the literary tradition, in particular how comparison with Latin parallels of the descriptions of mythical places in the OA can enrich our reading of the poem.[9] The Sirens turning to stone (OA 1287–1290) may function as an explanatory note to Vergil’s saxa sonabant (Aen. 5.866). Orpheus singing in his cave (OA 72–75) only becomes a common motif when Vergil uses it in his account of Orpheus’ grief (G. 4.507–510; Claud. Carm. min. 31.4–6). Chiron’s cave (OA 378–379, 393–405) goes unmentioned in earlier Greek epic but is a common feature in Flavian poetry (Statius Ach. 1.106–118). The cave of the nymphs (OA 643-8) fits well into a Latin setting (Prop. 1.20.33, Dracontius Rom. 2.129–130). Sleep’s voyage and the sphere he creates (OA 1004–1012) are reminiscent of Stat. Theb. 10.141–145 and Val. Fl. 8.74. The realm of the Cimmerians (OA 1119–1128) echoes Sil. 12.120–133.
Papaioannou focuses on Nonn. D. 19.136–236, the pantomime contest between Silenus and Maron in the funeral games for King Staphylus. Pantomime was a Latin genre that spread to the Eastern part of the empire and was associated with the poetics of Vergil’s Eclogue 6, in particular the performance of Silenus, a charismatic pastoral singer who enchants the world around him.[10] Maron (Vergil was known in the East as Μάρων) and Silenus seem “to draw inspiration from Vergil, but also from the agonistic theme as elaborated in both the Greek and the Roman tradition”(153).
Lovatt’s paper compares the reception of Ovid’s Phaethon (Met. 1.747–2.366) in Flavian authors (Silius Italicus Punica, Statius Thebaid 6, Valerius Flaccus 5.407–456) and in Nonnus (D. 38.105–434), with an interest in the focus and main topics of each version rather than the textual parallels.[11] Ovid’s Phaethon is child-like, and his is a cosmically significant quest for legitimacy and knowledge, an image of poetic self-fashioning. The Flavian receptions bring out the Ovidian themes of inheritance and degeneration, cosmic disorder, ecphrasis and framing, repetition and succession. Nonnus exceeds Ovid’s emphasis of Phaethon’s youth and playfulness and highlights his fiery character and impulsiveness through his overuse of the whip.
This book invites further work on the impact of Latin on late antique Greek poetry: on poetics, especially in the wake of A. Lefteratou and F. Hadjittofi (eds.), The Genres of Late Antique Christian Poetry, Berlin, 2020; methodologically, on Kontrastimitation, réécriture, allusion, and anachronism;[12] and on how late antique epic reflected on the common use of Latin in the late antique East, for instance in the episode of Beryto in Nonn. D. 41, the multilingual references in the Paraphrase of the Gospel of John and the Visio Dorothei.
Authors and Titles
Katerina Carvounis, Sophia Papaioannou, and Giampiero Scafoglio, “Preface: Later Greek Epic and the Latin Literary Tradition”
Ursula Gärtner, “Latin and Later Greek Literature: Reflections on Different Approaches”
Katerina Carvounis, “The Poet as Sailor: Claudian between the Greek and Latin Traditions”
Emma Greensmith, “Odysseus the Roman: Imperial Temporality and the Posthomerica”
Giampiero Scafoglio, “Triphiodorus and the Aeneid: From Poetics to Ideology”
Marcus Kersten, “ἄνδρα περικλυτά: Revisiting Mythical Places in the Orphic Argonautica”
Sophia Papaioannou, “Pantomime Games in the Dionysiaca and Vergil’s Song of Silenus”
Helen Lovatt, “Nonnus’ Phaethon, Ovid, and Flavian Intertextuality”
Notes
[1] On bilingualism, see J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language, Cambridge 2003; M.-H. Marganne and B. Rochette (eds.), Bilinguisme et digraphisme dans le monde gréco-romain, Liège 2013. On the diffusion of Latin, see B. Rochette, Le Latin dans le monde grec, Brussels 1995; P. Schubert, Les grecs héritiers des romains, Vandœuvres 2013. On the teaching of Latin, see B. Rochette, “L’enseignement du latin dans la partie hellénophone de l’Empire romain”, in Á. Sánchez-Ostiz et al. (eds.), De Grecia a Roma y de Roma a Grecia, Pamplona 2007, pp. 47–63; E. Dickey, Learning Latin the Ancient Way, Cambridge 2016; M.-Ch. Scappaticcio, Artes Grammaticae in frammenti, Berlin 2015.
[2] On Latin texts on papyrus see, J. D. Thomas, “Latin Texts and Roman Citizens”, in A. K. Bowman et al. (eds.), Oxyrhynchus, London 2007, 231–243; S. Ammirati, “Per una storia del libro latino antico”, Scripta 3 (2010), 29–45; P. Buzi, Manoscritti latini nell’Egitto tardo-antico, Imola 2005; M-Ch. Scappaticcio, Papyri Vergilianae, Liège 2013; L. Del Corso, “Latin Books in Late Antique Egypt”, in N. Reggiani (ed.), Greek Medical Papyri, Berlin 2019, 207–226.
[3] Nonn. P. 13.21–22 linteum; 19.101–109 titulum.
[4] Exceptions are few: e.g. Ps. Longinus On the Sublime 12.4–5. Overview with commentary in D. Jolowicz, Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novels, Oxford 2021, 4–5.
[5] Ibid. 6–14.
[6] F. Hadjittofi (2007), “Res Romanae: Cultural Politics in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica and Nonnus’ Dionysiaca“, in M. Baumbach et al. (eds.), Quintus Smyrnaeus. Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic, Berlin, 357–378.
[7] Expanding on E. Greensmith, The Resurrection of Homer in Imperial Greek Epic, Cambridge 2020, 328–335.
[8] For a similar formation see Nonn. D. 22.180-6.
[9] Zuenelli 2019, quoted on p. 123, refers to S. Zuenelli, “The Transformation of the Epic Genre”, in Ch. Reiz – S. Finkmann (eds.), Structures of Epic Poetry, Volume III, Berlin 2019, 25–52.
[10] P. 161: νέοισι καὶ ἀρχεγόνοισιν ἐρίζων (“in rivalry with both new and old”) is Nonn. D. 25.27 (not 1.25–27).
[11] Additional bibliography: for Nonnus see G. D’Ippolito, “Nonno di Panopoli e i poeti latini”, in Á. Sánchez-Ostiz et al. (eds.), De Grecia a Roma y de Roma a Grecia, Pamplona 2007, 311–331; M. Paschalis, “Ovidian Metamorphosis”, in K. Spanoudakis (ed.), Nonnus of Panopolis in Context, Berlin 2014, 97–122.
[12] K. Thraede (1962), “Epos”, RAC 5, 983–1042, col. 1039; G. Genette, Palimpsestes, Paris 1982; H. Kaufmann, “Intertextuality in Late Latin Poetry”, in J. Elsner and J. Hernández Lobato (eds.), The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, Oxford 2017, 149–175; T. Rood et al., Anachronism and Antiquity, London 2020, ch. 3.