G. O. Hutchinson

Greek to Latin : frameworks and contexts for intertextuality

PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION PART I: TIME 1. Making Histories 2. Strife and Change PART II: SPACE 3. Rome, Villas, South Italy 4. Sicily, Athens, Rest of Greek Mainland, Rhodes 5. Asia, Massilia, Alexandria PART III: WORDS 6. Two Languages 7. Transposition and Triads 8. Styles and Settings 9. Trunk and Branches PART IV: GENRE 10. The Landscape of Prose 11. The Grounds of Prose 12. The Grounds of Hexameter Poetry 13. Space and Intertextuality in Hexameters 14. Hexameters: History and Internal Mixture BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEXES I. Index of Passages Discussed II. General Index

Propertius and the Unity of the Book

How, in books of Roman poetry, are poems related to each other and to the book as a whole? The question is approached with divergent preconceptions. On the one hand, many assume that the design of a book will be symmetrical, and should be represented in a diagram. In such a scheme, every connection must be plausible—which is never the case; and it must be supposed that ancient readers were given to making diagrams, through which alone such symmetry can be perceived. It is also remarkable how seldom such schemes illuminate the most salient questions about the books. Thus in Book I of Propertius it is the last three poems whose presence most needs to be explained. Skutsch detaches them from his scheme and refers to them as a ‘coda or superstructure’.

Rhythm, style, and meaning in Cicero's prose

This article has a double purpose: to argue for some specific points on Ciceros rhythm, and to show how the significance of rhythm for literary understanding is larger than has perhaps been perceived. The piece is based on a reading of the whole of Cicero; but it will make only occasional reference to the letters. The question of rhythm in the letters is particularly involved, and it will be best handled elsewhere.

APPIAN THE ARTIST: RHYTHMIC PROSE AND ITS LITERARY IMPLICATIONS

If we had no idea which parts of Greek literature in a certain period were poetry or prose, we would regard it as our first job to find out. How much of the Greek prose of the Imperial period is rhythmic has excited less attention; and yet the question should greatly affect both our reading of specific texts and our understanding of the whole literary scene. By ‘rhythmic’ prose, this article means only prose that follows the Hellenistic system of rhythm started, it is said, by Hegesias, and adopted by Cicero and by many Latin writers of the Imperial period. Estimates of how much Greek Imperial prose is rhythmic have long varied drastically. Some experts suggest that all or much artistic Greek prose in the period is rhythmic, others that what little there is fades out after the first century a.d. , as part of the victory of Atticism. There has been fairly little substantial work on rhythmic prose in the first three centuries a.d. for over fifty years (more on accentual prose from the fourth). The object of this article is to investigate a large part of one authors work thoroughly, and to establish that that part is rhythmic. It will also aim to show how that conclusion should greatly affect our whole conception of the author as a writer, and our reading of his every sentence.