Simonides and Horace on the Death of Achilles

Barchiesi, Alessandro

doi:10.1353/are.1996.0018

Cited by 15 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…As Heslin identifies, Statius states that the Bacchic festival of the Achilleid is the biennial trieteris. 24 This festival of maenadism, celebrated on a mountain-top, is the same one that the Theban women of Euripides' Bakkhai are celebrating when Pentheus spies upon them and is torn apart (note trieterida in Ach. 1.595 vs. τριετηρίδων in Bak.…”

Section: Ritual Archetypesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…D. S. Robertson (1940), 177. 69 Barchiesi (1996), 55, also notes this: "qui Stazio supera ogni modello conosciuto" ("here Statius surpasses every known model"). The Rom(ul)an descent from Trojan Aeneas may also be relevant here, as a promise of the destruction that Achilles will wreak on Troy and its descendantscf.…”

Section: Saevus Achillesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These cross-references frame the Achilleid as a text that is mutually After Ovid's Achilles has slain Cycnus, he turns to feasting with the Greeks, marvelling ("mirabile" at 12.165, and "mirabantur" at 12.168) at the invulnerability of Cycnus' body, which turned aside his spears and blunted his sword (12.164-67). 24 At this point Nestor breaks in to mention that in his own generation (aevo, 12.169note that this is also the generation of Peleus) the hero Caeneus was invulnerable in a similar way to Cycnus: 25 "...Caenea Perrhaebum, qui factis inclitus Othryn incoluit, quoque id mirum magis esset in illo, femina natus erat. "…”

Section: Centaurs and Lapithsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hinds (1998), 104-7. 24 As an aside, it may be worth noting the similarities in approach between Herakles killing the Nemean lion in Pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibl. 2.5.1 and Achilles defeating Cycnus in Met.…”

Section: Centaurs and Lapithsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1.8). 24 Barchiesi goes on to show that Statius mentions the Thebaid as a model for the Achilleid to some degree; while Statius' fontes are novos ("new"), which might suggest a programmatic shift, his garland is called secunda ("second"), 25 implying a certain degree of continuity between the two epicsat least insofar as they are both epics. And an Achilleid cannot really be anything else; the popularity of the Iliad makes Achilles the most famousmost heroichero of literary history, and in line with the Homeric intertext he establishes at Ach.…”

Section: Statius' Proem and Recusatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

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Appropriate Transgression: An Intertextual Approach to Problems of Genre and Heroism in Statius' Achilleid

Mason¹

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Statius’ second epic poem, the Achilleid, deals with a subject matter that is particularly problematic: Achilles’ early life, in which he is raised by a centaur in the wilderness and then disguises himself as a woman in order to rape the princess of Scyros. Recent scholarship has also pointed to other problematic elements, such as Achilles’ troublesome relationship with his mother or the epic’s intertextual engagement with elegiac and ‘un-epic’ poetry. This thesis extends such scholarship by analysing Statius’ use of transgression in particular. It focuses primarily upon the heroic character of Achilles and the generic program of the Achilleid as a whole. The first chapter focuses upon Achilles’ childhood and early youth as a foster child and student of the centaur Chiron. It demonstrates that the hero’s upbringing is used to emphasise his ambiguous nature in line with the Homeric Iliad, as a hero who is capable of acting appropriately, but chooses not to. Achilles’ wild and bestial nature is emphasised by its difference to the half-human character of Chiron, who might be expected to be act like an animal, but instead becomes an example of civilisation overcoming innate savagery, an example of what Achilles could have been. The second chapter discusses the ambiguities inherent in a study of transgression, in the light of Achilles’ transvestite episode on Scyros. Numerous intertextual allusions construct various sets of expected behaviours for the transvestite youth, but his failure to live up to any of them portrays him as a truly transgressive hero. In this way, he is similar to Hercules or Bacchus, whose heroism is constructed partly upon their transgressive natures and inability to conform to societal custom. In the final chapter, the study of transgression is extended to Statius’ generic program, associating the epic with elegy. Statius employs many elegiac tropes, and makes numerous allusions to the poetry of elegists such as Ovid and Propertius. In particular, elegiac poetry’s peculiar trope of constructing and emphasising boundaries in order that they may be crossed (thus making the poetry feel more transgressive) is mirrored in the Achilleid. In this way, the Achilleid’s engagement with transgression is considered to be, in part, a method for presenting an innately problematic hero to Statius’ Flavian audience in an accessible and interesting manner.

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Section: Ritual Archetypesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Saevus Achillesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Centaurs and Lapithsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Centaurs and Lapithsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Statius' Proem and Recusatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

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Appropriate Transgression: An Intertextual Approach to Problems of Genre and Heroism in Statius' Achilleid

Mason¹

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Calling out the Greeks: Dynamics of the Elegiac Canon

Farrell

2012

A Companion to Roman Love Elegy

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Musa Pedestris

Morgan

2010

189

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The wealth of metrical forms adopted by classical poetry is one of its characteristic features. Yet metre features only sporadically in contemporary criticism of ancient poetry. This book makes the case that metre was central to the Roman experience of literature, and should be restored to a central position also in interpretation of that poetry. By the time Roman poets came to write hexameters, choliambics, and sapphics, these metres could all claim rich histories, and consequently brought a wealth of associations in their own right to the poems they carried. Powerful effects can be achieved by manipulation of the established characters of their metrical media: by giving the metre of classical Latin poetry its proper weight, critics can restore to that poetry a critical, neglected dimension. In four main chapters on representative metres or metre groups, this book considers how Roman poets exploited the connotations of metrical form: the ‘Catullan’ associations of the Flavian hendecasyllable; the logic that produced the ‘pure’ iambic trimeter; the sapphic stanza between Catullus, Horace, and Statius; and the various strategies attempted by poets to subvert the superlative status of the benchmark metre, the dactylic hexameter. Also considered are sotadeans, priapeans, saturnians, elegiacs, and Horace's epodic structures. Connections between poetic practice and the academic study of metre in antiquity are highlighted, and attention is also given both to Greek perceptions of the metres they bequeathed to Rome, and to the effect on Roman versification of the perception that these forms were irreducibly Greek.

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Simonides and Horace on the Death of Achilles

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Appropriate Transgression: An Intertextual Approach to Problems of Genre and Heroism in Statius' Achilleid

Appropriate Transgression: An Intertextual Approach to Problems of Genre and Heroism in Statius' Achilleid

Calling out the Greeks: Dynamics of the Elegiac Canon

Musa Pedestris

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