Compitum

Simone Beta, Moi, un manuscrit. Autobiographie de l'Anthologie palatine, Paris, 2019.

Éditeur : Les Belles Lettres
210 pages
ISBN : 9782251449296
17,00 €

Je suis né à Constantinople vers 950 après J.-C. Je ne connais pas le nom exact de mon père, même si je n'ignore pas que bien des hommes ont contribué, d'une manière ou d'une autre, à ma naissance. Je sais en revanche qui était ma mère : un animal (une génisse, une brebis, ou une chèvre) qui, à sa mort, a donné aux hommes sa tendre peau afin que mes nombreux pères puissent écrire à sa surface, chacun à l'aide de son stylet à la pointe de métal trempée dans une encre plus ou moins foncée tirée de la noix de galle, les textes fort précieux que j'ai portés en moi jusqu'à votre époque, à vous qui venez à peine de commencer à lire l'histoire de ma vie.
Je suis un manuscrit, vous l'aurez compris – plus précisément, le manuscrit qui contient l'Anthologie palatine, un recueil d'épigrammes.

Michael P. Hanagan, Reading Sidonius' Epistles, Cambridge, 2019.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
256 pages
ISBN : 9781108429214
75 £

Sidonius Apollinaris' letters offer a vivid series of glimpses into an otherwise sparsely documented period. His rich anecdotes feature the events, characters, and moments that defined his life, ranging from the treason trial of Arvandus to the Visigothic raiding of Clermont, from the corrupt and vile Seronatus to the holy widow Eutropia, and the day-to-day incidents that confronted a Gallo-Roman poet, aristocrat, and bishop as the Late Roman West transitioned into the barbarian successor kingdoms. Like any good storyteller, Sidonius exploited a wide array of narratological tools, manipulating temporality for dramatic effect, sketching his heroes and villains in vivid detail, and recreating witty dialogue in a collection that is highly organised and carefully strategised. This book provides a fuller understanding of his contribution to Latin literature, as a careful arranger of his self-image, a perceptive exploiter of narrative dynamics, and an influential figure in Late Antique Gaul.

Sabine R. Huebner et Christian Laes (dir.), The Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World, Cambridge, 2019.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
422 pages
ISBN : 9781108470179
95 £

Using a variety of historical sources and methodological approaches, this book presents the first large-scale study of single men and women in the Roman world, from the Roman Republic to Late Antiquity and covering virtually all periods of the ancient Mediterranean. It asks how singleness was defined and for what reasons people might find themselves unmarried. While marriage was generally favoured by philosophers and legislators, with the arguments against largely confined to genres like satire and comedy, the advent of Christianity brought about a more complex range of thinking regarding its desirability. Demographic, archaeological and socio-economic perspectives are considered, and in particular the relationship of singleness to the Roman household and family structures. The volume concludes by introducing a number of comparative perspectives, drawn from the early Islamic world and from other parts of Europe down to and including the nineteenth century, in order to highlight possibilities for the Roman world.

Giuseppe La Bua, Cicero and Roman Education. The Reception of the Speeches and Ancient Scholarship, Cambridge, 2019.

Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
406 pages
ISBN : 9781107068582
90 £

Cicero saw publication as a means of perpetuating a distinctive image of himself as statesman and orator. He memorialized his spiritual and oratorical self by means of a very solid body of texts. Educationalists and schoolteachers in antiquity relied on Cicero's oratory to supervise the growth of the young into intellectual maturity. By reconstructing the main phases of textual transmission, from the first authorial dissemination of the speeches to the medieval manuscripts, and by re-examining the abundant evidence on Ciceronian scholarship from the first to the sixth century CE, Cicero and Roman Education traces the history of the exegetical tradition on Cicero's oratory and re-assesses the 'didactic' function of the speeches, whose preservation was largely determined by pedagogical factors.

Clark Colahan, Jagoda Marszalek et Pedro Manuel Suárez-Martínez (éd.), El Colloquium elegans de Bernal Díaz de Luco. Tradición senequista, eclesiástica y picaresca, Hildesheim, 2018.

Éditeur : Olms
Collection : Noctes Neolatinae, 31
X-304 pages
ISBN : 978-3-487-15663-7
58 €


Juan Bernal Díaz de Luco es bien recordado como portavoz de la reforma moral en la España progresista de principios del XVI, crítico implacable de los males de la Iglesia en el Concilio de Trento, obispo de Calahorra, aliado de Bartolomé de las Casas en el Consejo de Indias, y autor de libros de éxito concebidos para guiar a eclesiásticos de todo rango hacia una conducta más ética. No es tan sabido, en cambio, que era un buen conocedor de la tradición satírica clásica, como evidencia este irónico diálogo menipeo casi olvidado, el Colloquium elegans, que se desarrolla a las puertas del cielo. En él participan las almas recién llegadas de dos clérigos hipócritas y un pastor de ovejas arrepentido, que se defienden de las acusaciones de un demonio que pugna por llevárselos al infierno. La obra se publicó en París solo varios años después de que lo escribiera Luco, siendo estudiante en Salamanca, y evoca los fantasmas del emperador Claudio en la Apocolocyntosis de Séneca y los del papa más notorio de la época, Julio II, en el Iulius exclusus de Erasmo; pero, además, presenta a unos personajes y unos temas que, en una mezcla de ingenio clásico y protesta ética, se plasmarán después en el Lazarillo de Tormes.

Source : Olms

Rita Degl'Innocenti Pierini, Pomponio Secondo: profilo di un poeta tragico 'minore' (e altri studi su poesia latina in frammenti), Bologna, 2018.

Éditeur : Pàtron Editore
Collection : Testi e manuali per l'insegnamento universitario del latino 144
164 pages
ISBN : 978-88-555-3441-3
euro 18

La prima parte del volume offre un profilo argomentato di un poeta tragico imperiale Pomponio Secondo, pressoché sconosciuto, ma che fu invece molto apprezzato da intellettuali come Quintiliano, che come tragico lo antepone a Seneca, e Plinio il vecchio, che gli dedicò una biografia in ben due libri. Oltre al profilo biografico, collegato alla temperie culturale dell'età giulio-claudia, si fornisce per la prima volta un ampio commento dei frammenti attribuiti al poeta, che testimoniano la presenza di modelli letterari del periodo augusteo, di Virgilio soprattutto, ma anche di Ovidio e nello stesso tempo rivelano notevoli affinità con la tragedia senecana: non mancano poi segnali che dimostrano come anche Pomponio Secondo potesse costituire un modello per la poesia di Stazio. Nell'ottica dell'approfondimento dello studio di testi frammentari tragici, la seconda parte del volume offre tre saggi, che indagano su aspetti importanti dell'immaginario tragico greco e latino, il tema tirannico, l'eros e le figure femminili.

Source : Pàtron editore