A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  Deproost, Paul‐Augustin. (1990). L’apôtre Pierre dans un épopée du VIe siècle. Paris: Études Augustiniennes.

  Faulkner, Andrew. (2014). Faith and fidelity in Biblical epic: The Metaphrasis Psalmorum, Nonnus and the theory of translation. In: Nonnus of Panopolis in Context: Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity, Trends in Classics, supp. vol. 24 (ed. Konstantinos Spanoudakis), 195–210. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

  Fo, Alessandro. (1982). Studi sulla tecnica poetica di Claudiano. Catania: Tringale.

  Fournet, Jean‐Luc. (1999). Hellénisme dans l’Égypte du VIe siècle. La bibliothèque et l’œuvre de Dioscore d’Aphrodité. 2 vols. Institut français d’archéologie orientale. MIFAO 115: Cairo.

  Fournet, Jean‐Luc. (2003). Théodore, un poète chrétien alexandrin oublié. L’hexamètre au service de la cause chrétienne. In: Des Géants à Dionysos: Mélanges de mythologie et de poésie grecques offerts à Francis Vian (ed. Domenico Accorinti and Pierre Chuvin), 521–39. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.

  Gelzer, Theodor. ed. (1975). Musaeus: Hero and Leander (trans. Cedric Whitman), 289–389. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  Giannakis, Georgios. ed. (1982). OPΦEΩΣ ΛIΘIKA. Ioannina: Ioannina University.

  Gigli Piccardi, Daria. (2005). AEPOBATEIN: L’ecfrasi come viaggio in Giovanni di Gaza. Medievo Greco 5: 181–199.

  Gigli Piccardi, Daria. (2014). Poetic inspiration in John of Gaza: Emotional upheaval and ecstasy in a Neoplatonic poet. In: Nonnus of Panopolis in Context: Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity, Trends in Classics, supp. vol. 24 (ed. Konstantinos Spanoudakis), 403–419. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

  Gnilka, Christian. (1963). Studien zur Psychomachie des Prudentius. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

  Gonnelli, F. ed. (1998). Giorgio di Pisidia, Esamerone. Pisa: Edizioni ETS.

  Green, Roger P. H. (2006). Latin Epics of the New Testament: Juvencus, Sedulius, Arator. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Halleux, Robert and Schamp, Jacques. ed. (1985). Les Lapidaires grecs. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

  Hernández de la Fuente, David. (2015). Poetry and philosophy at the boundaries of Byzantium (5th–7th Centuries): Some methodological remarks on the Nonnians. In: New Perspectives on Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire (ed. Ana de Francisco Heredero, David Hernández de la Fuente, and Susana Torres Prieto), 81–100. Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

  Herzog, Reinhart. (1975). Die Bibelepik der lateinischen Spätantike: Formgeschichte einer erbaulichen Gattung. Munich: Fink.

  Hofmann, Heinz. (1988). Überlegungen zu einer Theorie der nichtchristlichen Epik der lateinischen Spätantike. Philologus 132: 101–159.

  Hopkinson, Neil. (1984). Review of Giannakis 1982. Classical Review 34: 19–22.

  Hopkinson, Neil. (1994). Greek Poetry of the Imperial Period: An Anthology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Hunter, Richard. (2005). Generic consciousness in the Orphic Argonautica. In: Roman and Greek Imperial Epic (ed. Michael Paschalis), 169–192. Heraklion: University of Crete.

  Jeffreys, Elizabeth. (2006). Writers and audiences in the early sixth century. In: Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism (ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson), 127–139. Aldershot and Burlington VT: Ashgate.

  Kaldellis, Anthony. (2007). Christodorus on the Statues of the Zeuxippos Baths: A New Reading of the Ekphrasis. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 47: 361–383.

  Kaster, Robert A. (1988). Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Kirsch, Wolfgang. (1989). Die lateinische Versepik des 4. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Akademie.

  Kneebone, Emily. (2008). TOΣΣ’ EΔAHN: The poetics of knowledge in Oppian’s Halieutica. In: Signs of Life? Studies in Later Greek Poetry (ed. Katerina Carvounis and Richard Hunter), 32–59. Ramus Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature. Victoria, Australia.

  Kneebone, Emily. (Forthcoming). Monograph on Oppian’s Halieutica.

  Kost, Karl Heinz. ed. (1971). Musaios. Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar. Bonn: Bouvier.

  Labarre, Sylvie. (1998). Le manteau partagé: Deux metamorphoses poétiques de la Vie de saint Martin chez Paulin de Périgueux (Ve s.) et Venance Fortunat (VIe s.). Paris: Études Augustiniennes.

  Lauritzen, Delphine. (2011). Exegi monumentum: l’ekphrasis autonome de Jean de Gaze, Byzantinoslavica 69: 61–79.

  Lauritzen, Delphine. (2014). Nonnus in Gaza. The expansion of modern poetry from Egypt to Palestine in the early sixth century CE. In: Nonnus of Panopolis in Context: Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity, Trends in Classics, supp. vol. 24 (ed. Konstantinos Spanoudakis), 421–433. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

  Lauritzen, Delphine (2015). Jean de Gaze, Description du tableau cosmique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

  Lightfoot, Jane. ed. (2014). Dionysius Periegetes: Description of the Known World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Livrea, Enrico. ed. (1978). Anonymi fortasse Olympiodori Thebani Blemyomachia (P. Berol. 5003). Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain.

  Livrea, Enrico. ed. (1979). Pamprepii Panopolitani Carmina (P. Gr. Vindob. 29788 A–C). Leipzig: Teubner.

  Livrea, Enrico. (1992). Review of Halleux and Schamp (1985). Gnomon 64: 204–211.

  Livrea, Enrico. (1998). La chiusa della Gigantomachia greca di Claudiano e la datazione del poemetto. Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 16: 194–201.

  Livrea. Enrico. (2014). The last pagan at the court of Zeno: Poetry and politics of Pamprepius of Panopolis. In: New Perspectives on Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire (ed. Ana de Francisco Heredero, David Hernández de la Fuente, and Susana Torres Pieto), 1–30. Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

  Ludwich, Arthur. ed. (1897). Eudociae Augustae, Procli, Lycii, Claudiani carminum graecorum reliquiae. Leipzig: Teubner.

  Ma, John, (2007). The worlds of Nestor the poet. In: Severan Culture (ed. Simon Swain, Stephen Harrison, and Jaś Elsner), 83–113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  MacIver, Calum. (2012a). Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica: Engaging Homer in Late Antiquity. Leiden: Brill.

  MacIver, Calum. (2012b). Representative bees in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica. Classical Philology 107: 53–69.

  McLynn, Neil. (1998a). The other Olympias: Gregory Nazianzan and the family of Vitalian. Zeitschrift für Antike und Christentum 2: 227–246.

  McLynn, Neil. (1998b). A self‐made holy man: The case of Gregory Nazianzen. Journal of Early Christian Studies 6: 463–483.

  McLynn, Neil. (2014). Julian and the Christian professors. In: Being Christian in Late Antiquity: A Festschrift for Gillian Clark (ed. Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell), 120–136. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Macrides, Ruth and Magdalino, Paul. (1988). The architecture of ekphrasis: Construction and context of Paul the Silentiary’s poem on Hagia Sophia. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 12: 47–82.

  Magnelli, Enrico. (2008). Colluthus’ “Homeric” Epyllion. In: Signs of Life? Studies in Later Greek Poetry (ed. Katerina Carvounis and Richard Hunter), 151–172. Ramus Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature. Victoria, Australia.

  Magnelli, Enrico. (2016). The Nonnian hexameter. In: Brill’s Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis (ed. Domenico Accorinti), 353–370. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

  Martorelli, Ugo. (2008). Redeat verum: Studi sulla tecnica poetica dell’ Alethia di Mario Claudio Vittorio. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

  Mastrangelo, Marc. (2008). The Roman Self in Late Antiquity: Prudentius and the Poetics of the Soul. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

  Miguélez Cavero, Laura. (2008). Poems in Context: Greek Poetry in the Egyptian Thebaid, 200–600 AD. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.

  Miguélez Cavero, Laura. (2013a). Triphiodorus, The Sack of Troy: A General Study and a Commentary. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

  Miguélez Cavero, Laura. (2013b). Rhetoric for a Christian commun
ity: The poems of the Codex Visionum. In: The Purpose of Rhetoric in Late Antiquity: From Rhetoric to Exegesis (ed. Alberto J. Quiroga Puertas), 91–121. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

  Mulligan, Bret. (2007). The poet from Egypt? Reconsidering Claudian’s eastern origin. Philologus 151: 285–310.

  Nelis, Damian. (2005). The reading of Orpheus: The Orphic Argonautica and the epic tradition. In: Roman and Greek Imperial Epic (ed. Michael Paschalis), 169–192. Heraklion: University of Crete.

  Paschalis, Michael. (2008). The Abduction of Helen: A reappraisal. In: Signs of Life? Studies in Later Greek Poetry (ed. Katerina Carvounis and Richard Hunter), 136–150. Ramus Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature. Victoria, Australia.

  Prauscello, Lucia. (2008). Colluthus’ pastoral traditions: Narrative strategies and bucolic criticism in the Abduction of Helen. In: Signs of Life? Studies in Later Greek Poetry (ed. Katerina Carvounis and Richard Hunter), 173–190. Ramus Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature. Victoria, Australia.

  Renaut, Delphine. (2005). Les declamations d’ekphraseis: Une réalité vivante à Gaza au VIe siècle. In: Gaza dans l’Antiquité tardive. Archéologie, rhétorique et histoire (ed. C. Saliou), 197–220. Cardo 2. Salerno: Helios.

  Roberts, Michael. (1985). Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity. Liverpool: Cairns.

  Roberts, Michael. (2002). Venantius Fortunatus’s life of Saint Martin. Traditio 57: 129–187.

  Schelske, Oliver. (2011). Orpheus in der Spätantike. Studien und Kommentar zu den Argonautica des Orpheus. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.

  Schindler, Claudia. (2009). Per carmina laudes: Untersuchungen zur spätantiken Verspanegyrik von Claudian bis Coripp. Berlin: De Gruyter.

  Schottenius Cullhed, Sigrid. (2015). Proba the Poet: The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba. Leiden: Brill.

  Shorrock, Robert. (2011). The Myth of Paganism: Nonnus, Dionysus and the World of Late Antiquity. Bloomsbury, London: Bristol Classical Press.

  Simelidis, Christos. ed. (2009). Selected Poems of Gregory of Nazianzus (I.2.17; II.1.10, 19, 32). Hypomnemata 177. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

  Simelidis, Christos. (2016). Nonnus and Christian literature. In: Brill’s Companion to Nonnus of Panopolis (ed. Domenico Accorinti), 289–307. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

  Sowers, Brian P. (2008). Eudocia: The making of a Homeric Christian. PhD diss., University of Cincinnati.

  Sowers, Brian.P. (2018). In Her Own Words: The Life and Poetry of Aelia Eudocia. Center for Hellenic Studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

  Spanoudakis, Konstantinos. (2007). Icarius Jesus Christ? Dionysiac Passion and biblical narrative in Nonnus’ Icarius Episode (Dion. 47, 1–264). Wiener Studien 120: 35–92.

  Spanoudakis, Konstantinos. (2013). The resurrections of Tylus and Lazarus in Nonnus of Panopolis (Dion. XXV, 451–552 and Par. Λ). In: Le voyage des légendes. Hommages à Pierre Chuvin (ed. Delphine Lauritzen and Michel Tardieu), 191–208. Paris: CNRS.

  Spanoudakis, Konstantinos. ed. (2014a). Nonnus of Panopolis in Context: Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity, Trends in Classics, supp. vol. 24. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

  Spanoudakis, Konstantinos. ed. (2014b). Nonnus of Panopolis, Paraphrasis of the Gospel of John XI. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Springer, Carl. (1988). The Gospel as Epic in Late Antiquity: The Paschale Carmen of Sedulius. Leiden: Brill.

  Tissoni, Francesco. ed. (2000). Cristodoro. Un introduzione e un commento, Hellenica 6. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.

  Vian, Francis. ed. (1987). Les Argonautes Orphiques. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

  Whitby, Mary. (1985). The occasion of Paul the Silentiary’s ekphrasis of S. Sophia. Classical Quarterly 35: 215–228.

  Whitby, Mary. (1994). The evolution of the Nonnian style. In: Studies in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus (ed. Neil Hopkinson), 99–155. Cambridge Philological Society Supplement 17. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society.

  Whitby, Mary. (2002). George of Pisidia’s presentation of the Emperor Heraclius and his campaigns: Variety and development. In: The Reign of Heraclius (610–641): Crisis and Confrontation (ed. Gerrit J. Reinink and Bernard H. Stolte), 157–173. Leuven, Paris, Dudley MA: Peeters.

  Whitby, Mary (2007a). The Cynegetica attributed to Oppian. In: Severan Culture (ed. Simon Swain, Stephen Harrison, and Jaś Elsner), 125–134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Whitby (2007b). The Bible Hellenized: Nonnus’ Paraphrase of St John’s Gospel and “Eudocia’s” Homeric centos. In: Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity: Inheritance, Authority, and Change (ed. J.H.D. Scourfield), 195–231. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales.

  Whitby, Mary. (2008). “Sugaring the pill”: Gregory of Nazianzus’ advice to Olympias (Carm. 2.2.6). In: Signs of Life? Studies in Later Greek Poetry (ed. Katerina Carvounis and Richard Hunter), 79–98. Ramus Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature. Victoria, Australia.

  Whitby, Mary. (2013). Writing in Greek: Classicism and compilation, interaction and transformation. In: Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity (ed. Christopher Kelly), 195–218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Whitby, Mary. (2014). A learned spiritual ladder? Towards an interpretation of George of Pisidia’s hexameter poem On Human Life. In: Nonnus of Panopolis in Context: Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity, Trends in Classics, supp. vol. 24. (ed. Konstantinos Spanoudakis), 435–457. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.

  Whitby, Mary. (2018). Christodorus of Coptus on the statues in the baths of Zeuxippus at Constantinople: Text and context. In: Nonnus of Panopolis in Context II: Poetry, Religion, and Society (ed. Herbert Bannert and Nicole Kröll), 271–288. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

  Zarini, Vincent. (2003). Rhétorique, poétique, spiritualité: La technique épique de Corippe dans la Johannide. Turnhout: Brepols.

  Zito, Nicola. (2012a). Massimo di Efeso e I Lithica orfici. Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica, 140: 134–166.

  Zito, Nicola. (2012b). Sull’autore del poemetto Περɩ` καταρχω˜ν attribuito a Massimo di Efeso. Eikasmos 23: 259–276.

  Zito, Nicola. (2013). Per una rilettura del ‘secondo prologo’ dei Lithici orfici. In: Le voyage des légendes. Hommages à Pierre Chuvin (ed. Delphine Lauritzen and Michel Tardieu), 161–173. Paris: CNRS.

  Note

  * M.W. is grateful to Gianfranco Agosti for corrections and additional bibliography. She regrets that it has not been possible to take systematic account of bibliography published after 2015.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Epigrams, Occasional Poetry, and Poetic Games

  Bret Mulligan

  We have cultivated a healthy skepticism toward talk of cultural renaissance and rejuvenation, terms that often reveal more about the vagaries of cultural transmission and the aesthetic priorities of the critic than about the reality of a past culture glimpsed through that ever‐hazy distant mirror. Yet when one surveys the breadth, multiplicity, and richness of poetic composition in late antiquity, one is hard pressed to resist those old categories. Greek and Latin, high and low, Christian and secular, reactionary and revolutionary, center and periphery, in East and West, on stone and vellum – wherever one casts the eye, one spies poetry. A surge of creative interest and poetic capacity began in the early decades of the fourth century; crested in the first half of the fifth, and then ebbed until, by the mid‐seventh century, this moment had passed and something else had emerged. Here we will survey the broad vistas of short‐form poems, minor poetic genres, and occasional verse produced during later antiquity. Many of these are little poems about little things – artwork in baths, an epitaph for a pet bird, a silver dish. But small or minor need not make mean or trite: These were also significant works inscribed on monumental architecture and works of greater or lesser scale delivered to the temporal and spiritual masters of the world with keen purpose and real consequence. By necessity, our approach will be p
anoptic, and we will not spare a favorite device of late antique verse: the list. Strict chronology and the linguistic divide will often be deprioritized, not because these are unimportant (and indeed others have begun to tell these tales, e.g. Dihle 1994) but because it is better here to seek connections and commonalities, as there is so very much to discover.

  The Oxford Classical Dictionary would once say of late antique epigram that “to know their models is to despise them” (s.v. “Epigram”). But scholars in recent decades have exposed the crafty methods by which late antique poets selected, fragmented, epitomized, redacted, and supplanted prestigious texts. Nowhere is this clearer than with the cento (“patchwork”), in which phrases and whole lines extracted from Homer or Virgil were recombined into a new narrative whole (McGill 2005). Some centos aimed to delight. In the Cento nuptialis, Ausonius notoriously repurposed Virgil into a lurid account of a wedding night. Other centos possessed didactic purpose, refashioning secular texts in service of Christian truth. Pomponius’s Versus ad Gratiam Domini (early fifth century) draws on Virgilian phrases to Christianize Eclogue 1: This Tityrus is saved by the Christian God rather than by Octavian (cf. Endelechius’s Christian fantasy on Ecl. 1)! Jerome grumpily dismissed centos as “childish and like the scams of charlatans” (Epist. 53.7). But Faltonia Betitia Proba’s 694‐line mix of Old and New Testament stories was an instant hit in the mid‐fourth century. In the early sixteenth century it was still in the curriculum, alongside Juvencus, Lactantius, Prudentius, and Sedulius. The longest extant cento was composed in Greek by the Empress Eudocia, wife of Theodosius II. Her cento, which she claims was begun by another, is a biblical history from Genesis to the time of Christ, in 2344 Homeric lines. Centos could also serve the occasion. Eudocia was said to have included a centonic passage in her encomium of Antioch. Centos, although born from epic, could be miniaturized, as in a nine‐verse Christian epitaph from Anatolia or the Greek epigrams on Hero and Leander (AP 9.381) and Echo (9.832). Such texts demand that they be approached analytically, fragmented through the act of commentary, as their contextual implications are decoded as part of the reinterpretation of traditional texts and genres. They are quintessentially metaliterary works that draw attention to themselves as textual, written, and (re‐)written objects (Formisano 2007).