Exeter Studies in History
2 total works
Juvenal is a central author on courses in Classical Studies and has an important place on courses in comparative literature, both in the UK and USA. This new book by John Henderson shows how the eighth Satire, a brilliant piece of writing, makes fun of traditional Roman family values, and in the process displays the core of ideas and practices with which aristocratic culture at Rome enshrined itself - the display of geneologies, ancestral busts, proliferating names, the cult of exemplary legends - in all seriousness. Virgil and Horace are Juvenal's prize scalps in his spoof of the Roman fame-machine. The book is aimed at undergraduate students of Roman Satire, and advanced school students of Classical Civilisation; but the notes and Appendices also address scholars and advanced readers of Latin poetry and Roman cultural politics, supporting a new close-reading and engaging with literary theory. All Latin is translated.
Rutilius Gallicus was chief of police, poet and courtier of the Roman Emperor Domitian. He is a unique figure in that he can be studied in detail through both text and inscription, thereby fusing literature with history, and linking poetry with epigraphy. His recovery from a critical illness was celebrated in a sparkling poem by Statius, the poet laureate whose work is currently being read with new interest. As well as taking the reader on a tour across the city of Rome and the provinces, and through Flavian history and culture, Gallicus is by turns a sternly formal public servant, a delicate amateur poet and speaker, a workaholic chasing an early grave, the darling of his people, the strong-man of his tyrant Emperor, the miraculously resurrected patient of Apollo and a soldier-hero of the empire. How long could his luck last?