Mnemosyne Supplements Online, Supplement 2023
Editor-in-Chief:
Christoph Pieper
Christoph Pieper
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Various Authors & Editors
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Mnemosyne Supplements (MNS) has existed as a Book Series for about 60 years, providing a forum for the publication of over 400 scholarly works on all aspects of the Ancient World, including inscriptions, papyri, language, the history of material culture and mentality, the history of peoples and institutions, but also latterly the classical tradition, for example, neo-Latin literature and the history of Classical scholarship.
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Series:
Mnemosyne, Supplements, Volume: 463 and
Brill's Narratological Commentaries on Ancient Texts, Volume: 463
Author:
This Narratological Commentary on Silius’ Battle of Ticinus lays bare the narrative form of the text by addressing numerous narratological aspects, including plot-development, focalization, space, and intertextuality. The book also focuses on the phenomenon of ambiguity with its dynamic processes of (un-)strategic production, perception, and resolution. Ambiguity is a central feature of the Punica because of the epic’s constant oscillation between fact and fiction: it treats the changing fortunes of war and the tension between Rome and Carthage, which Silius translates into a moment of poetical equilibrium by his paradoxical problematization of triumph in defeat and defeat through triumph.
Author:
This first in-depth study of Valerius Flaccus’ animals reveals their role in his poetic programme and the manifold ways in which he establishes their subjectivity. In one encounter, a trapped bird becomes a tragic victim, while the trapper is dehumanized. Elsewhere there are touching portrayals of animal/human camaraderie and friendship. Furthermore, Valerius’ provocative consideration of the ‘monstrous’ challenges simplistic definitions of any being’s nature, or the nature of relationships across species. His challenge entails profound ethical implications for his Roman readership, which resonate with us as we assess our own relationship to animals and the natural world today.
Series:
Mnemosyne, Supplements, Volume: 459 and
Mnemosyne, Supplements, History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Volume: 459
Author:
Through new readings and interpretation of Cypriot inscriptions – written in Cypriot-syllabic Greek, Eteocypriot, Phoenician, and alphabetic Greek – Kypriōn Politeia, the Political and Administrative Systems of the Classical Cypriot City-Kingdoms is the first book which reconstructs in detail the political and administrative systems of the Classical city-kingdoms of Cyprus. The book investigates the bodies of government beyond the Cypriot kings and the roles played by magistrates and officials in local governments, it analyses accounts of the headquarters of the main administrative and economic activities – such as palace archives, and tax collection hubs –, and demonstrates that these systems were similar in all the city-kingdoms.
Series:
Mnemosyne, Supplements, Volume: 461 and
Mnemosyne, Supplements, Late Antique Literature, Volume: 461
Author:
Before serving as Bishop of Constantinople and becoming known to posterity as "the Theologian", Gregory of Nazianzus was an Athens-trained professional teacher of Greek literature. Steeped in the rhetorical culture of the Second Sophistic, his orations for Christian feasts such as Christmas and Pentecost belong to a Classical tradition that privileged the performance of philosophy at festivals. Widely copied and translated, they were instrumental in Gregory becoming one of the most popular and influential authors in Byzantium. This book shows how his orations represent a crucial point in the Late Antique reception of Platonism, rhetorical theory, and ancient festival culture.
Text, Translation, Commentary
The fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid is the shortest of his epic, and yet it has had an inestimable influence. The tragedy of Dido is replete with allusions to the Medeas of Euripides, Apollonius, and Ennius, as well as to Catullus’ Ariadne and the historical Cleopatra of Virgil’s Augustan Age. The book has intratextual connections to the poet’s own fourth Georgic (as he revisits the topic of apian regeneration and the loss of Eurydice), even as it confronts the reality of Rome’s bloody history with Carthage. The present volume offers the first full-scale commentary on the book in over eighty years, together with a new critical text that reflects recent scholarship on significant difficulties.
Religious Innovation and the Imperial Family
Author:
Ovid’s Fasti offers multifocal views of Augustan religion to convey ambivalences, inconsistencies and paradoxes in the imperial family’s religious agenda. Darja Šterbenc Erker explores Ovid's irreverent and ambiguous presentations of calendrical aeitiologies, deifications and imperial gods that humorously call to mind Arachne’s tapestry depicting faulty gods and that stand in sharp contrast to the poet’s more serious discussions of the values he cherishes, such as freedom and poetic immortality. Especially in the exilic revisions of the poem, Ovid emphasises the motif of bestowing divine honours upon mortals through poetry. For him, the stars in the heavens do not represent deified statesmen but immortal authors.
Author:
The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Ce livre propose une étude intertextuelle des descriptions d’aurores et de crépuscules dans la Thébaïde de Stace. Les images poétiques de l’Aurore aux doigts de rose ou du char solaire plongeant dans l’Océan cachent un travail minutieux sur la tradition littéraire antérieure. Les remarquables aurores et crépuscules de la Thébaïde illustrent parfaitement la façon dont les caractéristiques traditionnelles du motif peuvent être détournées pour transmettre un nouveau message. Chaque chapitre de cet ouvrage examine en détail un des aspects lié aux aurores et aux crépuscules : expressions formulaires, rôle structurant, fonction lumineuse et temporelle, potentiel métaphorique.
This book offers an intertextual study of dawn and dusk descriptions in Statius’ Thebaid. Poetic images such as rosy-fingered Dawn and the fiery chariot of the Sun sinking into the Ocean are the result of learned work on the previous literary tradition. The striking dawn and dusk descriptions in the Thebaid offer a perfect illustration of the way in which the traditional characteristics of the motif can be remodelled to produce new meaning. Each chapter in this monograph examines one of the aspects associated with dawns and dusks: formulaic diction, structuring role, relation to time and light, allegory.
Ce livre propose une étude intertextuelle des descriptions d’aurores et de crépuscules dans la Thébaïde de Stace. Les images poétiques de l’Aurore aux doigts de rose ou du char solaire plongeant dans l’Océan cachent un travail minutieux sur la tradition littéraire antérieure. Les remarquables aurores et crépuscules de la Thébaïde illustrent parfaitement la façon dont les caractéristiques traditionnelles du motif peuvent être détournées pour transmettre un nouveau message. Chaque chapitre de cet ouvrage examine en détail un des aspects lié aux aurores et aux crépuscules : expressions formulaires, rôle structurant, fonction lumineuse et temporelle, potentiel métaphorique.
This book offers an intertextual study of dawn and dusk descriptions in Statius’ Thebaid. Poetic images such as rosy-fingered Dawn and the fiery chariot of the Sun sinking into the Ocean are the result of learned work on the previous literary tradition. The striking dawn and dusk descriptions in the Thebaid offer a perfect illustration of the way in which the traditional characteristics of the motif can be remodelled to produce new meaning. Each chapter in this monograph examines one of the aspects associated with dawns and dusks: formulaic diction, structuring role, relation to time and light, allegory.
Volume Editors:
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How was the unique character of the island of Cyprus perceived in antiquity? This volume aims to engage with this question by examining references to Cyprus in ancient texts and by exploring authors connected to the island. The readers can thus find literary interpretations on a wide range of Greek and Latin texts focusing on Cyprus by world-leading Classical scholars, which will cast further light on the literary and cultural tradition of the island. The book promises to motivate further exploration of these topics and of the influence of a place in ancient literature and beyond.
Volume Editor:
The Silvae by Statius dethroned Virgil from the Studio in Naples, fostered the creation of a new genre, offered a model for court poetry, and seduced the most prestigious Humanists in the most vibrant centres of Renaissance Italy and the Netherlands. The collection preserves magnificent buildings otherwise lost; speaks of stones otherwise unknown; and memorializes people, rituals, and social relationships that would have passed into oblivion in silence. This volume offers a fresh look into approaches to the Silvae by editors and commentators, both at the time of the rediscovery of the poems and today.
The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Death, the ultimate change, is an unexpected Leitmotiv of Ovid’s career and reception. The eighteen contributions collected in this volume explore the theme of death and transfiguration in Ovid’s own career and his posthumous reception, revealing a unity in diversity that has not been appreciated in these terms before now.
Death, the ultimate change, is an unexpected Leitmotiv of Ovid’s career and reception. The eighteen contributions collected in this volume explore the theme of death and transfiguration in Ovid’s own career and his posthumous reception, revealing a unity in diversity that has not been appreciated in these terms before now.
Studies in Ancient Greek History in Honour of Josine Blok
Series:
Mnemosyne, Supplements, Volume: 471 and
Mnemosyne, Supplements, History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Volume: 471
Politeia and Koinōnia are forms of government and citizenship, community and participation, from Sappho’s social and political status to the economic and religious activity of women, from the reforms of Solon to the French Revolution. This book by leading scholars in ancient Greek history explores the most important aspects of Greek civilization and those that stirred the most our modern curiosity and our modern perceptions of Greek antiquity. The reason to organize this unique international exchange of ideas was to celebrate the outstanding scholarly achievement of Professor Josine Blok on the occasion of her retirement in 2019.
Series:
Mnemosyne, Supplements, Volume: 468 and
Mnemosyne, Supplements, History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Volume: 468
Building on the important work by Emily A. Hemelrijk, this volume endeavours to bring ancient women out of the domestic sphere and to examine their presence and activities in the public domain, for example as rulers, patrons, priestesses, wives, athletes and pilgrims. Covering the period 500 BCE to 650 CE and ranging across the Mediterranean and beyond, it fruitfully employs a great variety of source types and thematic approaches to argue that women in the ancient world were active in many parts of the public domain, including the civic, the religious and at times even the political and military spheres.
Zur zeithistorischen Perspektivierung des Mythos in den Argonautica
Author:
Die nach dem Untergang Neros, dem Vierkaiserjahr und dem Aufstieg Vespasians entstandenen Argonautica des Valerius Flaccus weisen bedeutsame Unterschiede zu früheren Fassungen des Argonautenmythos auf. Die vorliegende Monographie untersucht, welche Bedeutungshorizonte die Vermischung von Eroberungsfahrt und Bürgerkrieg, die Zeichnung von Herrschern und Tyrannen und die beunruhigende Darstellung der Götter in diesem Epos im ursprünglichen Rezeptionskontext entfalten konnten. Die vorgeschlagenen Interpretationen erweisen die Argonautica als Gedicht, das eine positive Bewertung der Herrschaft Vespasians nahelegt, aber in ambivalenter Weise offenlässt, ob das flavische Rom eher einer unbegrenzten Friedenszeit oder einem weiteren Bürgerkrieg entgegensteuert.
Written in the aftermath of Nero’s downfall, the Year of the Four Emperors and the rise of Vespasian, Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica departs significantly from earlier treatments of the Argonautic myth. This monograph explores how the epic’s fusion of foreign conquest with civil war, its depiction of rulers and tyrants, and its disconcerting portrayal of the gods may have resonated with its contemporary audience. The proposed readings suggest that the poem reflects approval of Vespasian’s rule, yet ambiguously leaves open the question of whether the future of Flavian Rome will hold everlasting peace or another civil war.
Written in the aftermath of Nero’s downfall, the Year of the Four Emperors and the rise of Vespasian, Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica departs significantly from earlier treatments of the Argonautic myth. This monograph explores how the epic’s fusion of foreign conquest with civil war, its depiction of rulers and tyrants, and its disconcerting portrayal of the gods may have resonated with its contemporary audience. The proposed readings suggest that the poem reflects approval of Vespasian’s rule, yet ambiguously leaves open the question of whether the future of Flavian Rome will hold everlasting peace or another civil war.