AL. Rivista di studi di Anthologia Latina

Les épigrammes 45-47 des Epigrammata Bobiensia, traduites ou adaptées du grec, tournent autour de Virgile et des grammatici; elles abordent la question de la légende de Didon et se moquent des grammairiens. L’épigramme 70, qui elle n’a pas de modèle grec, plaisante sur le nom d’un grand personnage du temps et s’inscrit dans la tradition des jeux sur les noms propres. Toutes ces épigrammes ont un fort lien avec la tradition épigrammatique, soit en amont, par leur source grecque, soit en aval, par leur proximité avec des poèmes d’Ausone et de l’Anthologie latine. Ce sont ces rapprochements, notamment, qu’on étudie ici.

The paper aims at contextualizing the genesis of the Christian Cento Vergilianus by Proba during Julian’s reign, since the Christianization of Virgil (cf. v. 23 Vergilium cecinisse loquar pia munera Christi) can be explained as a reaction to the cultural policy of the emperor Julian the Apostate, especially to his law against Christian scholars. The intent of the Cento would be confirmed by the vv. 488-494.

On the basis of an exhaustive study about the reuse of a Vergilian hemistic in the Cento Alcesta and in some poetic and historiographic texts of the Late Antiquity, the paper shows the hypothesis that the same Cento was written at the end of the Vth. Century.

Starting from the investigation of the Vergilian hemistics reused in the Cento Alcesta, the paper shows that a lot of those hemistics are reused with a semantic value, that involves the exegesis of Horatius by ps. Acro. The confirmation about the circulation of the ps. Acro’s Commentary in the Carthaginian milieu (that’s the same milieu of the Cento) comes from an apparently banal mistake in a ps. Acro’s annotation.

This paper deals with some ekphrastic epigrams of the Latin Anthology, focusing on some rhetorical aspects of their structure; it also discusses some issues of textual criticism.

This paper analyzes the epigram De funambulo (De tightrope walker), contained in Vn. poet. syll. 23 Z(urli) (=112 R =101 SB), from the points of view of its style, of its structure and of its materies sermonis. It focuses mainly on the paradoxical nature of its debunking and demythologizing pointe (starring Daedalus), conducted on the blade of a demystification which appears ‘acrobatic’ and deliberately absurd. Its mechanism is based on the strategic quote of a passage of the poem Aetna (510-511), contained in the Appendix Vergiliana. The article also includes two critical digressions on anth. Voss. 18 Z, 47, 48, the source of which is identified in Sil. 12, 89-95 (particularly 95) and on Vn. poet. syll. 87-88 Z: the paper’s author acknowledges, beyond the references to the Virgilian model, already detected either by previous scholars, a parodial reversal pertaining to fables that makes implicit reference to the apologue “The hen / goose with the golden eggs” (Avian. 33).

The paper gives a new constitutio textus of the epigram 205 R, that must be more conservative than previous editors’. The author analyses the various vitia prosodiaca of the epigram and corrects some mistakes in the exegesis of the poem. His most important textual contribution concerns the reading of the v. 9.

The paper, concerning the epigram 207 R, is linked, for its theme, to the same author’s contribution about the epigram 205. After a discussion on the constitutio textus and a right reference to an epigram of Vnius poetae sylloge, the author explains the expression iunctis pedibus at the end of the poem.

In order to explain the epigram 298 Happ by Luxorius, the only epigram of Luxorius’ sylloge written in anaclastic Ionic dimeters, the paper analyses the greek and latin poetry in the same meter and the ancient metric treatises about the Ionic verses.

The paper containes an accurate reanalysis of the epigram 298 R, which has been often examined by scholars with unsatisfactory results, both in the exegesis of the single verses and in the interpretation of the whole poem. The author, in particular, analyses the numerous amphibological wordplays by Luxorius, and the exegesis of some words, referring to some poems of Vnius poetae sylloge, by another Carthaginian grammaticus of the same poetic circle. The author also contextualizes the poem in a changed cultural frame, characterized by the break of the balance between the exponents of Roman society and the Vandalic court, that Luxorius, mocking the spado regius, derides.

In this paper, the 24 epitaphs of Virgil included in the Symposium XII sapientum (507-518 and 555-566 Riese²) are examined. They are imitations of the best known of Virgil’s epitaph Mantua me genuit, but also reveal the influence of Virgil’s biographic tradition. Particular attention is paid to the relation between the epitaphs and the Life of Virgil by the grammarian Phocas.

The symbolic virtues of bees and honey are examined as a constant topic in the funerary poetry. In two African epigraphes, the bees flying over the sepulchre pour honey on it, whilst in CLE 454, which is an epigraph coming from the province of Gallia Narbonese, the presence of insects in a sarcophagus is quite controversial. Many theories are proposed about this subject; furthermore, the persistency of this topic in Pontano’s humanistic poetry is also analysed as Pontano’s style was influenced by the ancient epigraphes.