Joseph Farrell

Classical Genre in Theory and Practice

It was once believed that the ancients invented and perfected certain genres and that the works they left might serve as models for later writers. Today belief in ideal patterns is a distant memory, and our interest in genre takes other forms. Classicists, by engaging with the specific problems presented by Greek and Roman literature and with the speculative discourse taking place throughout literary studies, have developed very different approaches to genre from the ones that prevailed in the past; but outside of classics, it appears that a traditional (and, now, outmoded) conception of the role that genre plays in classical literature continues to hold sway. This conception has a distinguished pedigree, and in fact derives from classical genre theory. But the practice of ancient writers was much more sophisticated than anything that classical theory could account for, and it is mainly on this practice that classicists now base their understanding of ancient ideas about genre.1 In this essay, I will briefly run over some familiar aspects of classical genre theory, but will be mainly concerned to illustrate how attention to the practice of ancient writers has led to an outlook on Greek and especially Roman literary genres that is very different from the traditional story and that has much more to contribute to the contemporary discourse about genre.

Latin Language and Latin Culture from Ancient to Modern Times: Roman Literature and Its Contexts

1. The nature of Latin culture 2. The poverty of our ancestral speech 3. The gender of Latin 4. The life-cycle of dead languages 5. The voices of Latin culture.

Lucretius and the Symptomatology of Modernism

Considerations of Lucretius and modernism generally take it for granted that Lucretius’s modernity, proto-modernity, or impact on modernity is exceptional. The usual story is that Lucretius, in some way, anticipated and perhaps made possible certain intellectual developments that one commonly associates with the modern. He was “ahead of his time,” and, in this way, we may see Lucretius as somewhat like ourselves, in contrast to more representative denizens of classical antiquity. This perspective is presumably meant to do honor to Lucretius, but it is not without its share of self-regard.

The Roman Suburbium and the Roman Past

Already in antiquity, the Roman suburbium was a place with a very long history, longer even than that of Rome itself. As time went on, its relationship to that history along with its identity in the present became ever more varied and complex. It would be difficult even in a longer paper to do the suburbium justice as a place where antiquity valued antiquity. The dominant impression of it has to do with those places that appear frequently in our literary sources as areas of cultivated retreat from the pressures of urban life, especially places like the Sabina and the territorium of Tibur, Praeneste and Tusculum. The idea that a journey from the city to some other place correlates with movement back in time is a familiar trope of Roman discourse. The distances involved are great, and the nature of the past that one finds in different places varies greatly. Keywords: dominant impression; Praeneste; Roman suburbium ; Sabina; territorium of Tibur; Tusculum; urban life

M. R. Gale, Virgil on the Nature of Things: the Georgics, lucretius and the Didactic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 321. ISBN 0-5217-8111-6. £40.00.

Preface List of abbreviations 1. Introduction: influence, allusion, intertextuality 2. Beginnings and endings 3. The gods, the farmer and the natural world 4. Virgils metamorphoses: mythological allusions 5. Labor improbus 6. The wonders of the natural world 7. The cosmic battlefield: warfare and military imagery 8. Epilogue: the philosopher and the farmer Bibliography Indexes.

Lucretius, DRN 5.44 Insinuandum

This passage has occasioned, if not proelia , at least divergent interpretations, not to mention instances of tergiversation. In 1910 Cyril Bailey modelled his first rendering of the lines closely on that of H. A. J. Munro: ‘But unless the breast is cleared, what battles and dangers must enter into us in our own despite’; ‘but unless the heart is cleansed, what battles and dangers must then find their way into us in our own despite’. But a reprint of Baileys translation in 1921 produced the following change: ‘…what battles and perils must we then enter into despite our will’. What changed Baileys mind? The explanation appeared years later in Baileys great edition and commentary of 1947. In his note on the passage (p. 1328), he cites objections to Munros interpretation that had been raised by C. N. Cole and W. R. Hardie. In this paper I will examine these objections and present my own interpretation of the passage, which amounts to a qualified vindication of Munro.