Parallel session 4, panel 2: Exploring Memory through Landscape

(Friday 22nd June, 9-11am)

Memories of the Countryside and the City: Reading the Landscape of Virgil's Eclogue 1
Marina Grochocki (Universidade Federal do Paraná)

The opening of Eclogue 1 presents the reader with a contrast: two characters meet, but they have different opinions about the countryside. Tityrus, who is described as peacefully reclining under a tree, sees the rural area also as a peaceful place; Meliboeus says he must go and describes the field as a turbulent space. The shepherd who will have to leave the countryside has a more negative point of view than the one who can stay. In Eclogue 9, the counterpart poem of Eclogue 1, Virgil addresses the subject of imperfect memory. This theme is also addressed in Eclogue 1. The two main landscapes of Eclogue 1 (the city and the countryside) are based on the shepherds' memories. Tityrus’ description of Rome is based on his own experience of it, whilst Meliboeus addresses what he shall soon leave behind – the countryside landscape – thinking about his best moments there.

My paper will consider the importance of memory for the development of the opposition of “city versus countryside” in Eclogue 1. It will apply some of the scholarly thought on memory in the Eclogues to Eclogue 1, a poem that has not been properly addressed from this perspective. My paper will provide a more nuanced analysis of Eclogue’s 1 dialogue between Tityrus and Meliboeus, two characters that seem to misunderstand each other’s memories and expectations. My paper will also argue that the conflicting memories of Tityrus and Meliboeus reflect the climate of political instability in which Virgil wrote the Eclogues.

Select Bibliography:

Breed, Brian W. 2006. Pastoral Inscriptions: Reading and Writing Virgil's Eclogues. London: Duckworth.

Meban, David. 2009. Virgil's ‘Eclogues’ and Social Memory. The American Journal of Philology 139:99-130.

Commemorating the Mons: Aetna and Poetic Memory
Ben Pullan (University Of Exeter)

In his seventy-ninth epistle to Lucilius, the younger Seneca describes Mt. Etna as a sollemnum omnibus poetis locum (‘a place or even poetic topos that is a matter of ritual to all poets’). The plethora of descriptions of the volcano in extant Greek and Latin verse suggests that it was indeed a landscape of great poetic appeal; amongst others, we have, most notably, that of Pindar (in his first Pythian), Lucretius (in De Rerum Natura 6), Virgil (in Aeneid 3), Ovid (as part of Pythagoras’ speech in Metamorphoses 15), and that of the anonymous poet of the Aetna, who devotes 650-odd hexameters to the workings of the volcano.

This paper will focus on the depiction of Etna in (most likely) the latest of these, the pseudo-Virgilian Aetna, in an effort to ascertain the mountain’s particular poetic appeal. It will argue that the volcano’s inherently paradoxical nature contributes greatly to this. Not only is Etna characterised by a tantalising (for the descriptive poet) array of visual and sensual paradoxes (cold and heat, ice and fire, water and land), but it is also defined by the conflict of myth versus science, which allows the poet to promote his own ‘world-view’. For some, the fires of Etna — steeped in mythology — present a glimpse into a primeval past, whilst others use science to rationalise its mysterious workings.

This paper will argue further that Etna derives its poetic appeal from the very fact that it becomes this consummate topos, that its landscape is, as Williams puts it, “palimpsest-like” in its literary history; the act of commemorating the mountain ensures that the poet also inscribes his name into that monument and writes himself into a line of succession.

Select Bibliography:

Buxton, R. (2016) 'Mount Etna in the Greco-Roman imaginaire: Culture and Liquid Fire', in J. McInerney and I. Sluiter (eds.) Valuing Landscape in Classical antiquity: Natural Environment and Cultural Imagination (Leiden: Brill), pp. 25-45.

Williams, G. (2017) Pietro Bembo on Etna: The Ascent of a Venetian Humanist (Oxford: OUP).

Natura melior potentiorque: reassessing and remembering Domitian in Stat. Silv. 4.3
Esther Meijer (Durham University)

Views on Statius’ excessive praise of Domitian in the Silvae diverge considerably: the praise has been interpreted as generically inherent (Geyssen 1996), humorous (Smolenaars 2006), and as thinly veiled criticism (Garthwaite 1984, 1989). Likewise, the praise of Domitian and his newly built Via Domitiana in Silvae 4.3, as voiced by the poet-narrator, the river Volturnus, and the Sibyl respectively, has been interpreted in various ways. Some argue that the subjugated landscape is grateful for Domitian’s alteration and civilization of nature (Coleman 1988, Smolenaars 2006), but this alteration can also be seen as an unsettling disturbance of nature (Newlands 2002).

This paper aims to reassess the remembrance and portrayal of Domitian in Silvae 4.3 by looking at the ways in which the Campanian landscape reacts to its subjugation by the Via Domitiana. Throughout the poem, the landscape undergoes a transformation from maligna tellus (4.3.29) to beatis … terris (4.3.128-9) as the construction of the road collapses the distance between Rome and Puteoli and thereby changes the conception of Empire. By means of intertextuality, genre, epigraphy, and landscape studies, I examine how the spatial reorganisation prompted by the Via Domitiana relates to the emperor’s remembrance, his expansion of Empire and his imperial policies.

Select Bibliography:

Coleman, K. (1988) Statius: Silvae IV. Oxford.

Garthwaite, J. (1984) ‘Statius, Silvae 3.4: On the fate of Earinus’, ANRW 2.32.1: 111-24.

Garthwaite, J. (1989) ‘Statius’ Retirement from Rome: Silvae 3.5’, Antichthon 23: 81-91.

Geyssen, J. W. (1996) Imperial Panegyric in Statius: A Literary Commentary on Silvae 1.1. New York.

Newlands, C. (2002) Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire. Cambridge.

Smolenaars, H. (2006) ‘Ideology and Poetics along the Via Domitiana: Statius Silvae 4.3’, in Nauta, R. R., Smolenaars, H. and van Dam, H.-J. (eds) (2006) Flavian Poetry: 223-44.

(Re)making memories: navigating coastlines in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica
Elaine Sanderson (University of Liverpool)

As we follow Valerius’ Argonauts on their bold voyage around the Mediterranean world, we are able to trace their course using references to coastal landscapes bordering the vast sea. In casting the Argonauts’ great unknown in civilised and Roman terms, Valerius creates a paradox between the expedition’s inherent primacy and the established familiarity of the topographical features which these intrepid sailors use as navigational aids throughout their journey. These catalogues have been discussed in relation to their engagement with comparable aetiological passages in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (Manuwald, 2014), their discussion of Roman imperial expansion (Slaney, 2014), and their place within Valerius’ negotiation of his belated position within the epic tradition (Malamud & McGuire, 1993, Hershkowitz 1998).

This paper will examine tensions between Valerius’ use of these coastal markers as sites of poetic and ideological memory and crucial tools in the Argonauts’ pioneering navigational arts. Using the catalogues describing the Argonauts’ departures from Iolchis and Colchis (V. Fl. 2. 6-20, 578ff; 8.178-208), I will demonstrate that the marginal positioning and problematic nature of these sites is closely linked with Valerius’ presentation of navigation within the Argonautica, a self-conscious motif which, like the coastlines which inform its practice, negotiates complex themes of innovation and transgression. I will suggest that in exploring a major metapoetic trope within strict confines depicted by weighty indicators of the Argonautica’s Flavian roots, Valerius is able to shape his poetic craft as a daring extension of established epic precedents. I will therefore show that, in addition to offering insight to literary and cultural traditions, through their central role in aiding the development of the epic’s main narrative, Valerius’ coastlines are renewed as important sites of memory by their interactions with his Argonautic navigators.

Select Bibliography:
Hershkowitz, D., 1998, Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica: Abbreviated Voyages in Silver Latin Epic, Clarendon Press.
Malamud, M. A., and McGuire, D. T., 1993. Flavian Variant: Myth. Valerius’ Argonautica. In Boyle, A. J. (ed.), Roman Epic, pp. 192-217
Stover, T., 2012, Epic and Empire in Vespasianic Rome: A New Reading of Valerius Flaccus’ ‘Argonautica’, Oxford University Press.