The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster
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Stephen Harrison is Senior Research Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Oxford, and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch. He is author and/or editor of many books on Latin literature and its later reception, especially on Vergil, Horace and Apuleius: recently these include a selected edition of the neo--Latin poetry of Popes Urban VIII, Alexander VII and Leo XIII (in the Bloomsbury Neo-Latin Series), a co-authored monograph (with Regine May),Apuleius in European Literature: Cupid and Psyche since 1650 (OUP), a collaborative classical reception commentary (with Lorna Hardwick and Elizabeth Vandiver) on First World War poetry (in the OUP Oxford Classical Reception Commentary series), and a volume of collected papers on Horace (for De Gruyter).
Abstract
This piece considers the contemporary impact of a major Roman military catastrophe toward the end of the reign of Augustus in 9 CE, in which the Roman commander P. Quinctilius Varus was disastrously defeated and killed in Germany by the Cherusci under Arminius. This piece seeks to show that the culpability of the general (which I shall call Cause A) is stressed in only one contemporary source (Velleius), who is likely to have had particular ulterior motives, and that writers of this time focussed on the devious and fraudulent behavior of Varus’s “barbarian” German adversaries (which I shall call Cause B), a way of easing the trauma of this catastrophic defeat. The essay ends by considering the retrospective view of Tacitus a century later.
Abstract
This piece considers the contemporary impact of a major Roman military catastrophe toward the end of the reign of Augustus in 9 CE, in which the Roman commander P. Quinctilius Varus was disastrously defeated and killed in Germany by the Cherusci under Arminius. This piece seeks to show that the culpability of the general (which I shall call Cause A) is stressed in only one contemporary source (Velleius), who is likely to have had particular ulterior motives, and that writers of this time focussed on the devious and fraudulent behavior of Varus’s “barbarian” German adversaries (which I shall call Cause B), a way of easing the trauma of this catastrophic defeat. The essay ends by considering the retrospective view of Tacitus a century later.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Preface V
- Acknowledgements
- Contents XV
- Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
- Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
- Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
- “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
- There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
- Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
- Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
- Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
- On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
- Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
- Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
- Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
- Camilla and the Guys 197
- How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
- The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
- The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
- Tacitus for courtiers 265
- Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
- The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
- List of Contributors 293
- General Index
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Preface V
- Acknowledgements
- Contents XV
- Christina S. Kraus: Publications to Date XVII
- Polybius and Livy’s Sentence Structure 1
- Narrative Inconsistencies and Ethical Constructions in Livy Book 31 29
- “I Want to Be Great Too – but How?” Alexander, Augustus, and Livy 43
- There and Back Again: Structure and Crossing in Livy’s Third Decade 61
- Livy on the Tiber Island: Writing Rome a Solo 77
- Recapturing the Capitol: Yet More Livian Refoundations 93
- Caesar’s Shrinking Lexicon 109
- On Endings and Beginnings in Caesar’s Bellum civile 125
- Cicero’s Caesarian Histories 143
- Tacfarinine Disorder: Sallustian and Livian Color at Tacitus, Annals 3.20–1 157
- Shadows of History: Sallustian Perspectives on Book 2 of Augustine’s Confessions 177
- Camilla and the Guys 197
- How Is Maecenas Like a Syllogism? Seneca on Style in the Moral Epistles 215
- The divergent epistolary cultures of greece and rome 400 BCE–400 CE 231
- The clades variana: literary commemoration of a roman military disaster 253
- Tacitus for courtiers 265
- Sex and empire: caesar and henry higgins 277
- The silence of the frogs: an experiment with paratragedy 293
- List of Contributors 293
- General Index
