AL. Rivista di studi di Anthologia Latina

In the Late Antiquity, various potesses (the most famous were Proba and Eudocia) wrote Centos. Now we can know another one, the poetesse Siria, who probably wrote the Cento Alcesta. She gave her name in the first seven verses of her Vergilian Cento with the literary device of the acrostichon, looking up to the beginning acrostichon of the Alcestis Barcinonensis and conveying the plentiful epigraphic poetry with acrosticha of African area, illustrated in an appendix of this paper.

This paper defends the goodness of the rare construct conscius conubiis, lectio difficilior in Verg. Aen. 4, 167-168, on the basis of linguistic, stylistic and literary arguments. Also it claims that conscius conubii, lectio facilior transmitted by vergilian few manuscripts, in cento Epithalamium Fridi (AL 18 R), vv. 16-17 - that replicates the Vergil’s two verses -, must be preserved.

Dans cet article, nous mettons en évidence quelques particularités de l’ordre des mots chez l’anonyme de la série 90-197 Riese, et notamment son goût pour les vers d’or. Dans un second moment, nous livrons quelques réflexions sur les poèmes 169-171, où l’auteur doit décrire une mosaïque à xenia.

The article begins with the analysis of the figure of the ant, in its various conceptual and symbolic meanings, in some classical texts (Phaedr. 4, 25; Hor. serm. 1, 1, 32-35; Avian. 34; Mart. 6, 15 and Anth. Pal. 7, 209 = 57 Clack [the epitaph of the hymenopter written by Antipater of Sidon]), to focus on late-antiquity epigram from the Vnius poetae sylloge (15 Z = 104 R = 93 SB), where the insect is exceptionally projected in a dark hellish underworld, a vision completely foreign to the conception peculiar to traditional imagery. The author identifies and analyzes the sources of this short poem, quoted through an intertextual technique, sometimes in an emulative, sometimes antiphrastic manner (particularly Avianus, Ovid, Virgil, Horace and Claudian [De raptu Proserpinae]), showing how behind the disquieting icon of the ant as the Ogre’s maid and servant, “Plutonia” pillager of wheat / Ceres (in her double supera and inferna meaning), at the same time the image of the greed landowner of Horace’s satire 1, 1 looms and appears, in a negative, hostile and even infernal vision, in complete contrast to the fable (but also biblical) stereotype of provident industrious ant. The article concludes with an interpretative re-reading, also in light of the original epigram of the unus poeta, of the short story The Argentine Ant by Italo Calvino (1952).

The paper debates the locus desperatus of the Pervigilium Veneris, v. 46, on the light of the new acquisitions from the unpublished correspondence between Claude Saumaise and Isaac Voss. The altered reading detinente is corrected in continenter.

By stating a similarity between Calp. 7, 69-72 and AL 250 Sh. B. and arguing that Calpurnius is imitating the latter, for his Caesar with his games is surpassing the ‘Vergilian’ Caesar, a terminus ante quem for the Liber Distichon Vergilii, which the epigram once surely was part of, can be given. Although Calpurnius’s Neronian date is heavily debated, another parallel between AL 255 Sh. B. and Nux 43f. and Suetonius’s probable knowledge of the Vergilian distichs point to a date in the first century AD.

Dans ces trois notules sur Symphosius, nous proposons d’abord une nouvelle interprétation du deuxième vers de l’énigme 24; puis nous indiquons, à propos de la tigresse de l’énigme 38, un parallèle jusqu’ici omis par la critique; enfin, concernant l’énigme 56, nous suggérons un rapprochement avec un passage de l’Évangile qui peut donner au texte un second niveau de signification.

In Symph. Aenigm. 84, 2 the reading functi of the main part of the manuscripts is defended against the reading pulchri of the Castalio’s manuscript on the basis of the Late Latin use and meaning of the verb fungor; so the allusion is to both the myths about Hippomenes and Acontius. Probably the reading pulchri comes from the glossa pulchram given by Salmasius’ manuscript. The paper shows an interesting hypothesis about the two recensiones of the Aenigmata.

starting from a comparison between the Alcestis’ funus in the Vergilian Cento Alcesta and the same narrative sequence in the Alcestis Barcinonensis, the paper gives an emendation of the term paones in Alcestis Barcinonensis, v. 109.

The paper gives a new evidence by Ambrosius to extend the range of the Christian texts referenced in the Symposius’ Aenigma LXXXIII, involving also an allusion to the Eucharist; so it’s clear that the author demeans the Christian religion and probably he was a pagan writer.

The paper examines the Petronius’ fragment 20 Mueller and its testimonia, who are the most important grammarians debating the anacreontic meter. The reading rutilum, given by Mallius Theodorus pro rapidum in that fragment, must be appraised almost like the other one. Probably Luxorius knew the Petronius’ fragment with the reading rutilum.

The paper shows an investigation of the correspondence between Claude Saumaise and Isaac Voss, included in the manuscript BPL 2366. Some utile news come from this investigation: such as the date of the two apographa Vossiana (Voss. O. 63 and Voss. O. 16) of the Latin Anthology, the discussion about a reading of the Pervigilium Veneris, the mention of an epigram attributed to Seneca and more information about the circulation of the codex Salmasianus.