Volume 167, Issue 2

This article provides conjectural emendations and exegetical notes to several passages in Cornutus’ Theologiae Graecae compendium ; it also offers an emendation of a controversial fragment of Cleanthes on physics ( SVF 1,497).

This article offers a usage study of the word φήμη throughout Herodian’s Roman History. It sets Herodian’s practice in a broader literary picture that includes other historians, but also epic and the novel, and then suggests that the extremely high frequency of φήμη in Herodian is unique among Greek-language historians and that Herodian is indebted to Latin-language historiography for this technique. The following sections examine how Herodian perceives the phenomenon of φήμη and makes it a salient feature of his historiographical strategy. The discussion shows that φήμη, regardless of its truth status, has multiple functions in Herodian’s narrative. First, it contributes to the portrayal of historical agents. Second, it is a crucial dramatic factor that signals turning points in the story and generates vividness and an atmospheric narrative. Third, it acts as a plot-driver in the story. Fourth, it has a role in the composition of the narrative by creating intratextual associations and narrative patterns. Finally, it has metanarrative ramifications, since there is a parallel between the use of φήμη by the historical agents and by Herodian himself. Overall, the analysis advances our understanding of Herodian’s narrative technique and his construction of historical truth.

In this article the aurea dicta of Epicurus ( DRN 3.12) are placed in conversation with larger discourses related to apian, floral, and honey imagery. Within these literary contexts, bees and honey are often associated with morally suspect appetites, effeminacy, and potentially dangerous erotic entanglements. Lucretius, I argue, seems to allude to these risky literary valences and manipulates them for his own poetic and rhetorical ends. Honey, we discover, is much more than a sugary substance.

In book 8 of his Naturalis historia , Pliny the Elder mentions the particularly savage character of some monkeys. Most editions and translations of Pliny’s text maintain that the reference to the fierce nature of these animals concerns both the cynocephali and the satyri . However, in the manuscript Riccardianus 488 (R in the transmission of Pliny), a second hand, contemporary to the period in which the text was copied, added supra lineam the obscure term * miarsima , which would refer to the nature of the satyri in opposition to that of the cynocephali . By examining part of the ancient zoological and geographic traditions, in particular the De natura animalium by Aelian, this article defends editing the text of Pliny with the adjective mitissima , already present in the first printed editions of the Naturalis historia , as follows: Efferatior cynocephalis natura sicut mitissima satyris .

This paper considers two scenes in Books 15 and 16 of the Punica of Silius Italicus: Hasdrubal’s celebration of the founding of Carthage with the ecphrasis of the general’s cloak (Sil. 15,410–440) and Scipio’s visit to the court of King Syphax (16,170–276). For both passages there are important reference texts in scenes of Vergil’s Aeneid and Statius’ Thebaid that have until now received no, or not enough, attention: Aeneas’ visit to the future Rome ( Aen. 8,102–553) and the sacrifice of Eteocles ( Theb. 11,205–238). After a brief assessment of the historiographical basis, I set out the influence in content and language of these reference texts on the two scenes. Further, I consider the adaptation of other epic pre-texts in the ecphrasis of Hasdrubal’s cloak and propose a new interpretation: the ecphrasis links Hasdrubal to Ganymede, Polyphemus and Cacus, and Scipio with Jupiter, Odysseus and Hercules. The study highlights positive and negative aspects of the pre-texts and shows the ambivalent characterisation of Silius’ Scipio, who is associated both with positive figures (Hercules and Aeneas) and with the sinister Polynices. The shared reference of the two scenes of the Punica has a linking, framing and preparatory function.