Neoteric Poetry

In this paper Vincenzo Tandoi’s contribution to neoteric studies is fully re-examined. The Italian scholar, whose memory is honored in the SCO volume, was the author of important essays on Laev. 21 Bläns., Tiburtinus’ and Praeneoteric Epigrams, Cic. Fragm. poet. 3 Bläns., Varro At. 3 Bläns., Catull. 54, Maec. 3 Bläns., Gall. 2-4 Bläns., and on many other fragmentary texts. A particular attention is paid to Tandoi’s interpretation of Corn. 3 Bläns. He considered it as part of the poem Glaucus and he was probably right: POxy 3965 (pub¬lished in 1992) brings new evidence in favor of this suggestion, even though Cornificius’ Glaucus was probably not the Pontius, but one of the Corinthian Glaucidae (see Hom. Il. 6,146 ff.).

By comparing the adverbial expression paulo post in Cinna fr. 6,2 Bl.2 with some details of
Ovid’s account of Myrrha’s story in Metamorphoses, it is possible to state the position of the
distich within the lost epyllion. In fr. 13 Bl.2 it would be preferable to print cummi instead of
cummis; and the fragment should be ascribed to Zmyrna

"This paper aims to reach a better understanding of the Neoteric poets by locating them within their social environment.
The Neoterics were writing in Rome around the 50s B.C.E.; today they are taken to include Catullus, C. Helvius Cinna, C. Licinius Calvus, Valerius Cato, and some others. It is debated whether the poets formed a closed literary coterie or a looser group with some shared interests. This paper proposes the slightly different thesis that they propagated values that found a wide resonance among their generation.
There only survive meagre fragments of the writings of the Neoterics other than Catullus. However, it is clear that they wrote refined mythological epyllia that were inspired by Hellenistic models, as well as short personal poems. One of the key themes in the latter, and sometimes even in the epyllia, is the appreciation of the pleasures of life, including love, sex, and good literature. Another common subject is politics and social life.
Remarks by Cicero and Sallust suggest that the hedonistic mindset of the Neoterics was shared by many well-to-do young men in Rome in the Sixties and Fifties B.C.E. It is telling that Epicureanism was notably popular at the time, even though no leading Neoteric appears to have subscribed to it.
Recent interpretations of Neoteric poetry have stressed its use of archaic and Hellenistic Greek models. This paper argues that it was rooted just as strongly in its social and historical context."

The attached PDF file contains the paper as it was delivered on 12 June 2013 at the 42nd Annual Conference of the Israeli Society for the Promotion of Classical Studies. A revised version is being prepared for publication.

'matutinum', as an adverb, should be retained in Cinna Fr. 6 against the emendation 'matutinus'. Cinna refers to Cicero's Aratea, with Cinna's 'matutinum' being an improved translation of Aratus' ὀρθρινὸν (as compared to Cicero's 'matutinis ... uocibus').

This article proposes a reading of the relationship between Nepos and Catullus in poem 1, using fr. 7 Marshall as evidence of Nepos’ ability to interpret and evaluate in the Chronica the great poets (in this case in point Archilochus) according to the Hellenistic perspective.

In this paper, I explore the significance of the spider, which appears in some of Catullus' Carmina (13, 23, 25 and 68). The etymological roots of the word, and the way the insect functions in the whole collection indicate an image of poetic weaving, in keeping with Callimachean aesthetics. By spinning out his threads in a subtle and refined web, the poet transforms the real world into a cathartic matrix.

The paper examines the probable reception of neoterics’ poetry by the more traditionally inclined part of the Roman society – the citizens cultivating mos maiorum. The first subsection outlines the literary context of the new poetic group’s artistic life, namely, the categories of imitation and emulation present in Latin writings, and describes the values associated with ancestral custom. The second part concerns distinctive features of neoteric artistic activity at Rome at the end of the Republic as well as some issues connected with their cohesive poetic program. The third and most relevant section contains an analysis of the three references to neoterics made by Cicero (Att. 7.2.1; Orat. 161; Tusc. 3.45); from his Greek (νεώτεροι) and Latin (poetae novi) words, which signalize a new kind of poetic activity, it can be inferred that the famous orator criticizes new poets. As the adjective “new” had a pejorative connotation in Roman culture, the last section aims at establishing which elements of neoteric poetry led to Cicero’s negative opinion. The elements in question are undoubtedly: contempt for Latin literary tradition and disregard of the Republic’s ancestral values.

Abstract. Il richiamo al sorgere e al tramontare del sole per indicare la durata incessante di un’azione diventa un τόπος in poesia latina a partire da un fortunato distico di Cinna, più volte rielaborato in poesia augustea. Oltre a Virgilio e Orazio, che adattano il modulo a generi ed esigenze diversi, è interessante il trattamento fattone dagli elegiaci, nei quali due termini per definire l’Est e l’Ovest in relazione all’eternità della fama poetica. Questa trasformazione potrebbe risalire a Gallo, al quale soprattutto Ovidio significativamente si riferisce. Le numerose occorrenze del τόπος in autori e generi diversi consentono confronti interessanti.

Keywords. Cinna  Orfeo  elegia  Cornelio Gallo

Keeping the form of technopaegnia (following the model of Simias, imitated later mainly by Ausonius, Iulius Vestinus and Optatianus Porphyrius), Laevius appears as the inventor of a new sub-genre, Erotopaegnion. His bizarre novelty, language experimentation and striking neologisms (combination of sounds, intensified onomatopoeia, intensive use of words having a  rare or a strange sound) originate from the Alexandrine tradition of artificial literature, which brought the “nouvelle vague” of Poeti Novi in Roman poetry, Laevius being a pre-neotericus.
Light and often licentious skits on the heroic myths, based on the Greco-Roman amorous or lascivious poetry, most of his poems consisted of mythical legends recounted in Hellenistic sentimental-erotic style. Moreover, there is a general Hellenistic tinge in his overall ludic tone, his titles, and literary strategies of his self-reflexive (?) poetry.
His poems consciously imitate, subvert, and criticize (in a form of literary polemic) established literary and material traditions from the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods, following the usual imitatio and aemulatio procedure, with clear receptions from various poets, especially Anacreon, whose versification he imitates, and Euripides, on whom he probably drew in some of his poems’ heroines. With his turn, he influences Varro in his Menippean Satires, and mainly poets of the second century AD. 
Later on, his work, from which only 33 fragments survive, inspired the Greek poet Musaeus (491-527 AD), who wrote Erotopaegnion Herus et Leandri in both a Greek and a Latin version and also the love poem Alphaeus and Arethusa, the Neo-Latin poet Hieronymus Angerianus Gerolamo or Girolamo Angeriano, who also wrote an epigram collection, called Erotopaegnion (1512), Sepinus, creator of Erotopaegnion libri III ad Apollinem (1553), and Francois Joseph Michel Noel in his Erotopaegnion, Sive Priapeia: Veterum et Recentiorum (1798), a collection of erotic poetry by various poets.

In Poem 101 Catullus narrates his journey to the Troad to perform the last rites at his brother’s tomb. In the first line (multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus) I recognize an allusion to Iliad 24,8 (ἀνδρῶν τε πτολέμους ἀλεγεινά τε κύματα πείρων). The poet readapts and uses the Homeric hexameter as a ‘motto’ to recall one of the most famous books of the Iliad. In it we are told of two episodes which took place precisely in the Troad and are very similar to the experience Catullus describes in his elegy: Achilles’ lament for the dead Patroclus and the celebration of Hector’s funeral. Thus, by means of the allusion to Iliad 24,8 the Latin poet succeeds in evoking the potent archetypical images of the Homeric epic and equating his brother with Patroclus and Hector. Not by chance, the association of his brother’s fate with that of the Iliadic heroes who perished in the common grave of Troy occurs also in Poem 65 (ll. 5 ff.) and especially in Poem 68 (ll. 19 ff and 89 ff.). But the decisive confirmation of Catullus’ allusion to Iliad 24,8 is given by Virgil. In Book 6 of the Aeneid he imitates Poem 101,1 in l. 692 (quas ego te terras et quanta per aequora vectum) and some lines afterward, in l. 699 (sic memorans largo fletu simul ora rigabat), he translates Iliad 24,9 (τῶν μιμνησκόμενος θαλερὸν κατὰ δάκρυα εἶβεν), establishing a very learned literary contest with Catullus, thus making clear that he understood his allusion.

В статье рассматривается возникновение классицизма в античную эпоху. Сначала даётся краткий ретроспективный обзор понятия «классики» до эпохи Возрождения, затем история возникновения этого понятия у Авла Геллия и Цицерона. Далее мы представляем ретроспективную историю классической тенденции на примере споров азианистов и аттицистов, неотериков и любителей старой поэзии, и в античном отношении к пластическим искусствам. Затем следует обращение к эллинистическим поэтам и филологам и, наконец, мы прослеживаем происхождение классической тенденции в классическую эпоху — в частности, создание списков «избранных авторов», развитие художественных канонов и отношения между классицизмом в искусстве и стремлением к старым и «добрым» нравам.

The article discusses the genesis of classicism in the Antiquity. At first, we give a brief retrospective review of the concept of "classic" until to the Renaissance, then the emergence on this concept in Aulus Gellius and Cicero. Further, we present a retrospective history of the classical tendency on the example of the disputes between Asians and Atticists, neoterics and lovers of old poetry, and in the ancient attitude towards the plastic arts. Hereafter the article focuses on the Hellenistic poets and philologists and, finally, we trace the origin of the classical tendency in the classical age-particularly, the creation of lists of «selected writers», the development of artistic canons and the relationship between classicism in arts and the pursuit of the old and «good» mores.

Discussions of the Roman reception of Hellenistic Poetry still often end with the Augustan era, sometimes with an explicit statement that later poets are influenced as much by Roman as by Alexandrian poets. In fact, the study of how Flavian poets received the Neoteric and Augustan reception of Hellenistic aesthetics offers a fascinating example of large-scale “window-“ or “double-allusion”, as Statius, Martial and others provide creative commentaries on and tendentiously shape their predecessors’ work as responses to Alexandrianism.
This article focuses on the specific example of Martial 1.92. It is widely recognized that this epigram alludes to Catullus 15, 21, 23, and 24. However, it has not been noted that its opening lines also allude to Callimachus’ Aetia prologue, signalling a series of further allusions which not only gives a metapoetic dimension to the triangular relationship between the poet, his deliciae Cestos, and his antagonist Mamurianus, but also tendentiously construct Catullus’ Furius and Aurelius cycle as similarly informed by (anti-)Callimachean aesthetics. This interpretation also relates to Martial’s ludic reification of Callimachean imagery, his depiction of books as beautiful boys and vice versa, his general reception of Catullus, and the division of Catullus’ own persona between Callimachean and Archilochean facets.

La literatura romana se configura a partir de tradiciones helenísticas, tradiciones que pueden personificarse, entre otras cosas, en grandes eruditos griegos traídos a Roma como “motín” de guerra. El objetivo de este artículo es hablar precisamente de uno de tantos eruditos, Partenio de Nicea, llegado a Roma después de la conquista a las grandes ciudades griegas y su influencia en el mundo romano, sobre todo en la configuración de los grandes poetas latinos y su literatura.

The only extant choliambic line by Cinna, comparing some action to a Psyllus doing something to an asp, is preserved by Aulus Gellius to illustrate that the adjective somniculosus can have the causative sense ‘sleep-inducing’ as well as the active one of ‘sleepy’. If Gellius is correct, then the simile’s missing verb is likely to have one of the Psylli, famed for their ability to lull snakes to sleep, doing just that to a ‘sleep-inducing asp’. The situation which would be compared to this must be that of someone receiving a taste of their own medicine. This would also account for the Psyllus’ imprecise epithet Poenus, which would pun on poena. If Gellius is wrong, and somniculosus means ‘sleepy’ as in almost all other instances in Latin, the combination of snake and sleep imagery, which can be paralleled separately in other texts, with the abusive choliambic metre might suggest that what is being compared to the asp is the flaccid penis of an impotent man.