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Epistula 46 is an invitation, written under the name of Paula and Eustochium, for Marcella to go to Bethlehem, by all means with the aim to stimulate positive interest in the Holy Land for a wider public and to inspire the urge to travel and sojourn. The narrative defines pilgrimage not only through biblical references but also familiarizes it through references to ancient pagan practices and pagan literature and makes it compatible with the lifestyle of Rome’s urban elites. While biblical references predominantly propagate Palestine’s spiritual appeal as a site of centuries-long salvation events, references to the classics – often combined with the expression or the stimulation of emotions – put the region’s social and intellectual appeal to the fore. The use of pagan literature, in which the traditions of educational travel of a cosmopolitan elite, the social utopia of aristocratic recessus, and not least the pleasure of otium aestheticised through literature are prefigurated, shapes Palestine in particular fashion as a place of longing. Especially the appeal of Bethlehem thus only forms through the combination of spiritual-intellectual visio and emotionally attractive social utopia, through conjunction of spelunca Christi and bucolic idyll.
In Martial’s epigrams Silius Italicus is portrayed as a man of learning, author of the Punica and admirer of Vergil’s works, but also as a public figure and a former consul of Rome. My paper focuses on the epigrams devoted to the ‘political’ Silius, and suggests to relate them mainly to a certain stage in Silius Italicus’ life and to a specific communication strategy.
This paper analyzes a specific section of Martial’s Apophoreta (Book 14), the ‘list’ of fourteen literary works that the poet-persona suggests to the reader as potentially suitable presents to give to friends on the occasion of the Saturnalia. It focuses strictly on the literary aspects of the poems and their underlying carnivalesque poetics. This includes an assessment of the logic of the poems’ arrangement and alleged inconsistencies. It is suggested that the section be read as a complex statement of Martial’s on various works and genres of Greek and Roman literature. The last couplet of the section (14.196), a certain Calvus’ work ‘On the use of cold water’ (De aquae frigidae usu), which is unidentifiable, receives particular attention, for previous scholarship has wasted a lot of ink on guessing what kind of work this may have been, thereby losing touch with the rich (meta-)poetics the couplet actually conveys.
Caesar’s visit to the ruins of ancient Troy in Lucan’s Bellum Civile book IX is an invented story which deals with important metaliterary themes such as poetic fama and the poetry’s eternalizing function. Lucan’s narrative also reveals the instrumental nature of Caesarean and Augustan propaganda: the Neronian poet highlights some contradictions of the Aeneid, showing the failure of the political project celebrated by Vergil.
Roms Metamorphosen im Exil
(2020)
In this article, we want to elucidate and contrast the exilic fates rendered in Ovid’s exilic elegies and in Lucan’s Bellum Civile. While Ovid’s persona undergoes a slow development towards acceptance of the exilic condition by ‘refounding’ a second Rome in Tomi, Lucan’s Pompey gradually severs himself from Rome, culminating in him dying far from home apparently without regrets. Both characters try to transfer the concept of Rome to new entities. However, they are not able to escape Rome’s grasp: Pompey is killed by a Roman mercenary in Egypt, Naso’s Roma secunda is in the end only a reproduction of the exul’s irrevocably Roman fate.
This article analyses the eroticized power dynamics that Ovid stages in the Metamorphoses. It argues that 1) erotic desire functions in Ovid as a synonym of the desire for power; 2) that the transformations of gods can be read as a metaphor of the powerful subjecting the powerless to their will; 3) that metamorphosed humans can be regarded as notional monuments to divine power; and 4) that, by parading the self-evident fictionality of his transformation tales (including, most notably, the story of Julius Caesar’s apotheosis in Book 15), Ovid allows his readers, at least for the duration of the reading process, to experience a modicum of freedom.
Etymologie und Erotik
(2020)
Taking its cue from the portrayal of Hercules as muscleman in both films and ancient sculpture this article turns to poetry as a verbal art and examines when and how the hero's body comes into focus in Roman epic and elegy. It is argued that moments of crisis contrasting Hercules’ state in a given situation to his former heroic achievements give rise to representations of his body, while epic fight scenes rather draw attention to the bodies of his inferior opponents. The body is described through references to different body parts, qualified by attributes as masculine in elegiac contexts. A somewhat exotic word as tori suffices to highlight the hero’s muscular body.
Theocritus’ id. 4 has been considered by some scholars as an example of rural mime; the fact that the poem, a unique case in the Corpus Theocriteum, does not contain any pastoral song or contest contributes to the impression of ‘realism’. This lack could be an obstacle for the poetological approach to the bucolic genre in antiquity, which considers metapoetry as its main feature. Our reading of the idyll shows that this limitation is only apparent.
Vorwort: tessellae
(2020)
A particularly dark chapter in the history of European-Jewish relations during the "Third Reich" involves the cooperation of individual Jewish Community leaders and functionaries with Nazi authorities, in particular the cooperation between a few single Jewish Community leaders and the Gestapo. This "cooperation" was partially born of the overall coercion, but in some cases was also marked by denunciation and betrayal. In order to avoid being deported themselves and to save their own skins, there were isolated cases of Jewish men and women who agreed to track down other Jews and hand them over to the authorities, knowing full well what they were doing.
Come si crea l'antisemitismo
(2020)
Zwischen den Weltkriegen
(2020)