Tag: Literature in the Ancient World

Articles

Tiberiana 3: Odysseus at Rome – a Problem

The choice of a name is contingent on a number of factors or combination of factors, from individual taste to cultural influences, from liking the sound of it (forwhatever reason), to honoring relatives and friends, to expressing admiration for public figures past and present, real, fictional, or divine. Roman patterns of naming were also influenced by the involvement not just of family members but of slave-owners as choosers of names…and by the blending of very different systems of nomenclature in the great tapestry of cultures woven in the capital city.

Articles

APOLLO AND HIS PURPOSE IN SOPHOCLES

Apollo actively intervenes in the fulfilment of Oedipus’ destiny through oracles and immanently in the onstage action. Rather than to punish him for any offence, the god’s purpose appears to be to impress upon Oedipus his existential insignificance. In the context of an ordered but absurd universe, Sophocles emphasises the paradox of the moral greatness of a man whose ‘official’ existential value is less than zero.

Articles

Suetonius and his treatment of the Emperor Domitian's favourable accomplishments

Suetonius’ negative portrayal of emperors was not limited to Domitian. Emperors Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero and Vitellius also received negative portrayal in accordance with the senatorial influence and damnatio memoriae evident in the literature of the period. This attitude towards these condemned emperors matched the views of the senatorial aristocracy who were the patrons of literary commissions and their authors.

Articles

Vergil's Aeneid VIII and the Shield of Aeneas: recurrent topics and cyclic structures

An analysis of Book VIII of Vergil’s Aeneid will result in the observation that this book forms a cyclus in the way that it ends as it starts, the preparations being underway for the war against Mezentius. Inside this frame, two units, the first larger than the second, concentrate on the topics of Hercules’ connection with Rome and the shield of Aeneas.