<i>Materiam superabat opus</i>: Lucretius Metamorphosed

Schiesaro, Alessandro

doi:10.1017/s007543581400001x

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…See especially Watson 1982. 18 On Lucretius' influence on Ovid, see for example Sommariva 1980;Wheeler 1995;Schiesaro 2014;and, most (Feldherr 2010: 123, 128). After the Flood, the act of shaping people is left to humans.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodily Fluids in Antiquity

Bradley¹,

Leonard²,

Totelin³

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

From ancient Egypt to Imperial Rome, from Greek medicine to early Christianity, this volume examines how human bodily fluids influenced ideas about gender, sexuality, politics, emotions, and morality, and how those ideas shaped later European thought.Comprising 24 chapters across seven key themes-language, gender, eroticism, nutrition, dissolution, death, and afterlife-this volume investigates bodily fluids in the context of the current sensory turn. It asks fundamental questions about physicality and fluidity: how were bodily fluids categorised and differentiated? How were fluids trapped inside the body perceived, and how did this perception alter when those fluids were externalised? Do ancient approaches complement or challenge our modern sensibilities about bodily fluids? How were religious practices influenced by attitudes towards bodily fluids, and how did religious authorities attempt to regulate or restrict their appearance? Why were some fluids taboo and others cherished? In what ways were bodily fluids gendered? Offering a range of scholarly approaches and voices, this volume explores how ideas about the body and the fluids it contained and externalised are culturally conditioned and ideologically determined. The analysis encompasses the key geographic centres of the ancient Mediterranean basin, including Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and Egypt. By taking a longue durée perspective across a richly intertwined set of territories, this collection is the first to provide a comprehensive, wide-ranging study of bodily fluids in the ancient world.Bodily Fluids in Antiquity will be of particular interest to academic readers working in the fields of classics and its reception, archaeology, anthropology, and ancient to Early Modern history. It will also appeal to more general readers with an interest in the history of the body and history of medicine.

show abstract

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodily Fluids in Antiquity

Bradley¹,

Leonard²,

Totelin³

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…His familiarity with Empedocles and Lucretius is especially well documented, but the influence of Heraclitus, Plato, and Stoics, among others, has received attention too. Ovid and philosophy : Rusten 1982;McKim 1984McKim -1985Myers 1994: 27-60, 133-66;Hardie 1995;Segal 2001;Hardie 2002: 150-163;Hardie 2009: 136-52;Nelis 2009: 248-52, 261-67;Van Schoor 2011;Garani 2013;Garani 2014;O'Rourke 2014: 20-25;Schiesaro 2014;Moser 2017;Kelly 2019;Volk and Williams 2022. 7. Labate 1984: 124-169;Liebermann 1999;Gibson 2005;Kelly 2019.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Of Philosophers, Crowns, and Boundary Stones: Revisiting Cipus in Metamorphoses 15

Marks

2023

dictynna

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Among the exempla Valerius Maximus uses to illustrate the virtue of pietas erga patriam, "devotion to one's country", is a quasi-historical figure of the Republic named Genucius Cipus, who grows horns on his head, which portend that he will be king if he enters Rome (5.6.3). The story, as Valerius tells it, has a simple narrative arc, moving directly from problem to resolution, and offers a straightforward moral message : horns appear on Cipus' head when he is leaving Rome ; they indicate that he will be king if he returns to the city ; to avoid that outcome, he goes into self-imposed exile ; the problem is solved, and Cipus is an example of pietas for the ages. Ovid in his Metamorphoses provides our other major version of this story (15.565-621), which is sometimes read as an illustration of Cipus' pious, anti-monarchical devotion to the Republic as well. 1 That reading is hard to maintain, however, since the many plot twists and turns of this version, its ambiguities of language and symbolism, and the seemingly illogical and self-contradictory actions of its characters, all confound a straightforward moralizing interpretation of the story. 2 This is not to say that the moral impulse of Ovid's Cipus comes under great suspicion - he appears to be committed to not being king as Valerius' Cipus is - but, rather, that it is unclear whether he avoids kingship at all or has a real choice in the matter ; indeed, there is much in the episode to suggest that, in the end, monarchy is inescapable and is even realized by Cipus himself, albeit in a different form. Ovid's version destabilizes, therefore, two "truths" on which Cipus' exemplarity in Valerius' version is based, that he avoided kingship (because he may not have) and that he made a moral choice, and a morally praiseworthy one at that (because the outcome may have been out of his control). 3 2 Some years ago, I offered an interpretation of this sort, identifying the unavoidability of kingship in Rome rather than Cipus' moral choice as the central message of Ovid's tale. 4 I argued that the poet uses the preceding story of the hasta Romuli, "Romulus'

show abstract

“…On path imagery used for poetry: Ford (1992), esp. 41–4; Nünlist (1998), chs.11–14; Schiesaro (2014), 86.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

LIES, DECEITS, MANIPULATIONS, AND OTHER FORMS OF AESTHETIC EXPRESSION IN HORACE, SATIRES 2.5

Horne

2022

Ramus

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Finagling an inheritance is one time-tested way of resolving a money shortage: just flatter your way into the good graces of the aged and rich. In Satires 2.5 Horace parodies the Roman version of this vice, known as captatio or ‘legacy-hunting’; with baroque imagination, he presents Odysseus, the mythological hero, consulting the prophet Tiresias in the Underworld and learning how to increase his fortune by amassing inheritances. Odysseus asks: tu protinus, unde | diuitias aerisque ruam, dic, augur, aceruos (‘tell me forthwith, prophet, where I can dig up riches and heaps of money’, 21f.). Tiresias responds: captes astutus ubique | testamenta senum (‘cleverly snatch on all sides the testaments of old men’, 23f.). Social critique naturally looms large in this poem about venal dishonesty. In major studies, Niall Rudd and Klaus Sallmann have examined the poem's criticism of contemporary Roman society, and later scholars have taken a similar line, often reading the poem as a send-up of flattery. All true, but there is more to say. Even as it treats of wills, money, and flattery, the satire also shows a quiet concern with aesthetic issues, especially the state of contemporary poetry.

show abstract

Materiam superabat opus: Lucretius Metamorphosed

Cited by 8 publications

References 34 publications

Bodily Fluids in Antiquity

Bodily Fluids in Antiquity

Of Philosophers, Crowns, and Boundary Stones: Revisiting Cipus in Metamorphoses 15

LIES, DECEITS, MANIPULATIONS, AND OTHER FORMS OF AESTHETIC EXPRESSION IN HORACE, SATIRES 2.5

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About