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Inconsistency in Roman Epic
Studies in Catullus, Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid and Lucan

Part of Roman Literature and its Contexts

Author: James J. O'Hara, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Date Published: April 2007
availability: Available
format: Hardback
isbn: 9780521641395

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About the Authors

How should we react as readers and as critics when two passages in a literary work contradict one another? Classicists once assumed that all inconsistencies in ancient texts needed to be amended, explained away, or lamented. Building on recent work on both Greek and Roman authors, this book explores the possibility of interpreting inconsistencies in Roman epic. After a chapter surveying Greek background material including Homer, tragedy, Plato and the Alexandrians, five chapters argue that comparative study of the literary use of inconsistencies can shed light on major problems in Catullus' Peleus and Thetis, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Vergil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Lucan's Bellum Civile. Not all inconsistencies can or should be interpreted thematically, but numerous details in these poems, and some ancient and modern theorists, suggest that we can be better readers if we consider how inconsistencies may be functioning in Greek and Roman texts.
- Considers the possible function of inconsistent passages in Roman epic poems
- Looks at Roman epic poems in the light of Greek poetic and critical tradition, and suggests that the use of inconsistencies became traditional in Roman epic
- Pulls together a great deal of recent work on Greek and Roman poetry within a brief compass, and with a fresh vantage point
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Product details
- Date Published: April 2007
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521641395
- length: 178 pages
- dimensions: 206 x 135 x 10 mm
- weight: 0.304kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Greek versions
2. Catullus 64: variants and the virtues of heroes
3. Death, inconsistency and the Epicurean poet
4. Voices, variants and inconsistency in the Aeneid
5. Inconsistency and authority in Ovid's Metamorphoses
6. Postscript: Lucan's Bellum Civile and the inconsistent Roman epic.
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Author
James J. O'Hara, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
James J. O'Hara is George L. Paddison Professor of Latin at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's Aeneid (1990) and True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (1996), as well as numerous articles and reviews on Latin literature.