How the Winds Blow: Inherited Anemologies in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica
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Darcy Krasne
Abstract
This chapter argues that the short description at Valerius Flacchus 1.577–578 of Boreas making a woodland groan, crops flatten, and the sea turn black is largely derived from similes in earlier literature, and that recognition of its specific sources is vital to understanding the local function and broader implications of these lines. Looking especially at the lines’ inheritance from passages in Vergil, Lucretius, Hesiod, and Homer, it argues that by reframing simile as reality, the lines engage both with the scientific tradition of weather prognostication and with an established tradition of representing cosmic order and disorder in the first and second similes of epic.
Abstract
This chapter argues that the short description at Valerius Flacchus 1.577–578 of Boreas making a woodland groan, crops flatten, and the sea turn black is largely derived from similes in earlier literature, and that recognition of its specific sources is vital to understanding the local function and broader implications of these lines. Looking especially at the lines’ inheritance from passages in Vergil, Lucretius, Hesiod, and Homer, it argues that by reframing simile as reality, the lines engage both with the scientific tradition of weather prognostication and with an established tradition of representing cosmic order and disorder in the first and second similes of epic.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
- Stephen Harrison’s Major Publications (June 2025) 13
- L. Manlius Torquatus’ in Sullam 27
- Catullus in the Ancient Greek Novels (with a Focus on Chariton) 43
- A Queer Catullus for the 2010s and 2020s? 75
- Swearing like a Philosopher on Trial: Catullus, Epicurus, and Beards in Apuleius’ Apologia 113
- Apuleius and the Greek Novel: Generic Infringement 135
- Philosophical Enrichment: Akrasia in Vergil 167
- Pallas, Son of Hercules 191
- Vergil in Ethiopia? Nello Martinelli’s Amba Alagia 207
- How the Winds Blow: Inherited Anemologies in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica 235
- The Gnat’s Descent: Intertextuality and Poetic Memory in the Pseudo-Vergilian Culex 261
- Vergilian Roleplay in The Rape of the Lock 283
- Back to the Future: (Spatio)temporal Enrichment in Horace’s Odes 3.3 and 3.27 307
- List of Contributors 327
- Index Rerum et Nominum
- Index Locorum
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
- Stephen Harrison’s Major Publications (June 2025) 13
- L. Manlius Torquatus’ in Sullam 27
- Catullus in the Ancient Greek Novels (with a Focus on Chariton) 43
- A Queer Catullus for the 2010s and 2020s? 75
- Swearing like a Philosopher on Trial: Catullus, Epicurus, and Beards in Apuleius’ Apologia 113
- Apuleius and the Greek Novel: Generic Infringement 135
- Philosophical Enrichment: Akrasia in Vergil 167
- Pallas, Son of Hercules 191
- Vergil in Ethiopia? Nello Martinelli’s Amba Alagia 207
- How the Winds Blow: Inherited Anemologies in Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica 235
- The Gnat’s Descent: Intertextuality and Poetic Memory in the Pseudo-Vergilian Culex 261
- Vergilian Roleplay in The Rape of the Lock 283
- Back to the Future: (Spatio)temporal Enrichment in Horace’s Odes 3.3 and 3.27 307
- List of Contributors 327
- Index Rerum et Nominum
- Index Locorum
