Compitum

Paraskevi Toma et Péter Bara (éd.), Latin Translations of Greek Texts from the 11th to the 13th Century, Leyde-Boston, 2025.

Éditeur : Brill
Collection : The Medieval Mediterranean, 143
XXII-476 pages
ISBN : 978-9-0047-0756-6
€145.00 excl. VAT

This volume examines the ‘phenomenon' of translation from Greek into Latin from the eleventh century to the thirteenth. These translated texts prompted Western scholars to rediscover the works of classical Greek and Byzantine authors and reshape the medieval intellectual landscape. Though our agenda focuses on translations of scientific texts, the collection of essays here also offers the reader insights into the broader cultural, social, and political functions and implications of individual translations and translation more broadly as a practice.

Source : Brill

Paolo Diacono, Carmina. Edizione critica a cura di Adriano Russo, Florence, 2024.

Éditeur : Sismel - Edizioni del Galluzzo
Collection : Edizione Nazionale dei Testi Mediolatini d'Italia, 72
XII-834 pages
ISBN : 978-88-9290-357-9
140 €

Paolo Diacono, importante intellettuale longobardo vissuto nell'VIII secolo, è noto per essere l'autore della Historia Langobardorum, il principale testo narrativo conservato sulla storia dei Longobardi in Italia. Tuttavia, egli fu anche un fecondo e raffinato poeta, versatile e capace di interpretare in maniera originale generi assai disparati (l'epigrafia, l'epistolografia, la poesia agiografica e liturgica, la poesia didattica, la poesia paratestuale). Il volume costituisce il primo e unico studio complessivo sulla tradizione dei carmina, di cui fornisce una nuova edizione critica, dopo le edizioni di E. Dümmler (1881) e K. Neff (1908). Si registrano avanzamenti considerevoli nel campo della critica testuale (ricostruendo il testo dei carmina a partire da una base testimoniale più ampia e con una più solida recensio), nel campo delle attribuzioni (affrontando su nuove basi e con nuovi strumenti d'indagine le questioni di paternità controversa che compromettono la definizione del corpus poetico di Paolo), nonché nel campo della critica delle fonti (riesaminando e rivalutando problemi di intertestualità e critica letteraria finora trascurati).

Source : SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo

Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, David Rafferty et Christopher J. Dart (éd.), How Republics Die. Creeping Authoritarianism in Ancient Rome and Beyond, Leyde-Boston, 2025.

Éditeur : De Gruyter
Collection : Studies in Ancient Civil Wars, 4
556 pages
ISBN : 9783111705446
99,95 €
Open Access

Authoritarianism is everywhere on the advance; democracies seem fragile and threatened. We console ourselves that where rule by the people has long established itself, it has never collapsed from internal causes. Except it did, once: in Rome.

Gail Trimble, Catullus: Poem 64, Cambridge, 2025.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
Collection : Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries
904 pages
ISBN : 9781107018594
$ 195.00

Catullus' longest poem, a miniature epic or 'epyllion' that tells two apparently unrelated mythological stories, is a central text in the Roman literary tradition. Allusive, exquisite, and sometimes shocking, it offers a profound exploration of human connection and aesthetic response against a backdrop of universal history. This major new edition addresses the interpretative challenges of the poem on every level of detail. The corrupt text is newly edited, while a line-by-line commentary of unparalleled depth and range integrates discussion of textual and linguistic matters with sophisticated literary criticism and a thoroughgoing awareness both of the poem's cultural and intertextual background and of its subsequent influence and reception. The introduction sets Catullus 64 in context, and an innovative epilogue draws together the threads of an overall interpretation. This book is an essential resource for the study of Latin poetry, and will transform its readers' understanding and appreciation of Catullus 64.

Source : Cambridge University Press

Rainer M. Ilgneret et Declan A. Lawell (éd.), Peter Abelard, Know Yourself (Scito te ipsum), Turnhout, 2025.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Brepols Library of Christian Sources, vol. 8
309 pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-60163-2
55€ (H.T.)

Peter Abelard (1079-1142), famous for his unhappy love story with Heloise, which he wrote down in his autobiographical work Historia calamitatum, was among the most respected scholars of his time. Brilliant as a philosopher and theologian, he was one of the co-founders of scholasticism, seeking to elucidate theological facts through logic.
Scito te ipsum is one of the most important texts of the twelfth century. Only in the later phase of his life and work did Abelard decide to separate moral themes from his overall theological schema, and to dedicate a monograph to them under the guiding concepts of "sin" (First Book) and "obedience before God" (Second Book, unfinished). As Ethica nostra it was intended to provide a Christian conception alongside a philosophical ethics, and to summarise the results of his previous studies.

Anke Walter, Festivals in Latin Literature: The Poetics of Celebration, Oxford, 2025.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
Collection : Oxford Scholarship Online
ISBN : 9780198931485

Festivals feature prominently in Latin literature, even in works that are not explicitly dedicated to festive days like Ovid's Fasti. This book explores the role of festivals in elegiac, lyric, and epic poetry, as well as historiography. In all of these, festivals play a more pervasive role than has so far been realized. Tibullus' elegiac oeuvre rests on an interplay between amatory and festive poetics, and Propertius uses festivals in his fourth book of elegies to question, from an amatory perspective, the memory associated with Roman festivals. In the poetry of Sulpicia and Ovid's Tristia, festivals allow voices that are otherwise marginalized to shape their own commemoration. Horace's Odes and the Carmen saeculare rest on an intriguing interplay of festivity in the private sphere, which forms but a fleeting moment, and the monumentality of public festivals. Post-Vergilian Latin epicists use festivals to explore the fragility of human identity in a world dominated by the gods, in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and to question the commemoration connected with festive days, undermining the foundational importance of festivals in the Aeneid. In Livy's ab urbe condita and Tacitus' Histories, festivals both provide structure and capture long-term developments in Roman history, while situating both works in broader historiographical and intertextual dialogues. The book sheds new light on these works, uncovering their unique ‘festive poetics'. It demonstrates that Latin literature adds important new aspects to our understanding of festivals, which offer even richer avenues of creating meaning and shaping or questioning commemoration than is often assumed.

Source : Oxford University Press