Epics of Rome

The Aeneid and Metamorphoses have continued to be rediscovered and reinterpreted throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The two world wars which defined the first half of the 20th century forced a reconsideration of all war poetry, particularly the Aeneid, which began to be recognised as a work of art which dealt with loss and lament just as much as glory and patriotism - a work which potentially questioned militarism and imperialism. Meanwhile Ovid's explorations of love, desire and identity chimed with the development of psychoanalysis, while his apparently chaotic epic became a major focus of interest later in the 20th century as post-modernism championed non-linear narratives and questioned the permanence of boundaries. Again, it was Ovid in particular who provided the springboard for many new texts, particularly the short story, which often resulted in dramatically diverse updates of the stories in the Metamorphoses. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Virgil and Ovid were both incredibly influential upon later poetry and culture, and in this lecture we look at some of the texts which look back to their epics in the late antique period through to the Renaissance, in particular Claudian's Rape of Proserpina and Shakespeare's poetry and drama, as well as other creative arts. By looking at the reception of Roman epic we gain some perspective on these ancient works and can appreciate how they were read and interpreted by their European cultural inheritors. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Ovid ends his work with a series of deifications: Julius Caesar becomes a god; Augustus will become a god. This most allusive and transformative of texts apparently ends with a pat celebration of the Julian family. However, this is not the end at all, for Ovid actually completes his work with his own immortality: he will live through his work and thus go beyond death and also beyond the holders of political power. It is a confident statement of the transcendence of poetry. Yet nothing is stable in Ovid's world, and the final book also contains a lengthy speech by the philosopher Pythagoras, whose beliefs include the perpetual rebirth of souls into new bodies. Is this an attempt to give a theoretical underpinning to the epic? Or does it once again snatch the rug from under the reader's feet?! Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

In books 11-14 of the Metamorphoses Ovid takes on the stories of Troy's fall and Rome's origin - have we finally reached the point of 'real epic'? In fact, Ovid's approach is very different from Virgil's in the Aeneid, and tends to focus on characters tangential to the canonical Virgilian and Homeric versions. There are also long diversions as characters from the Trojan War narrate non-military tales, with the result that Troy's destruction and Rome's foundation are told in a non-linear fashion. This lecture will explore Ovid's narrative strategy in these later books, and investigate the political and poetic effect of this Callimachean alternative to Roman foundation myth. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

This lecture focusses on the two most prominent lovers in Metamorphoses 9-11, Orpheus and Pygmalion. Both also happen to be artists. We first examine Orpheus, paying particular attention to the ways in which Ovid reworks the Virgilian account in Georgics 4, and then Pygmalion, concentrating on the nature of his passion and the connections between the sculptor and the internal narrator who tells his story. We conclude with reflections on the implications of these stories for our understanding of Ovid’s representation of artists in Metamorphoses. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

It is often said that Ovid's is a 'Callimachean epic', in other words an episodic and aetiological poem which eschews big scale narratives. As we are now tow thirds of the way through this poem, it is worth considering the degree to which the Metamorphoses 'plays by the rules' of epic poetry. In this lecture we consider the techniques and conventions which place this poem in the epic genre - particularly the scenes of battle or conflict; as well as the literary techniques which mark this poem as a hybrid or parodic epic. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Epic poetry often features a hostile and punitive god, who forms a barrier to the hero’s journey, but the Metamorphoses takes the theme of vengeful gods to the extreme, as the divinities are paraded as cruel and petty. In addition, when the poem ventures into the world of mortals, tales of grotesque and bloody revenge are frequent. Ovid’s inspiration here is often tragic drama, but this lecture will also look at the connections with contemporary political events, such as Augustus’ unusual move to bring ‘Mars the Avenger’ into the city of Rome itself. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

On the surface Ovid’s Metamorphoses appears to question traditional gender norms, in particular those held about elite Roman men. Even women are given the opportunity to tell their own stories in the poem. Yet, the Metamorphoses is full of stories about violent rapes that effectively silence the voice of the victim. Moreover, women are often presented in two stereotyped roles: as lovers or mothers. This then raises the question of whether or not gender stereotypes about women are really contested in Ovid’s work, and it would seem that, as is often the case with Roman literature, which was almost always written by men, we then learn more about male views of women than we do about real women. This is not to say that gender is entirely stable in the Metamorphoses but that the work is ultimately concerned with the male gaze. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

When Virgil died in 19 BCE, the Aeneid became an instant classic, and even before his death references had been made to it in the works of other authors. In some ways it may have seemed impossible to write epic now – how could you follow up Virgil? The up and coming poet, Publius Ovidius Naso was working on quite a different form of poetry, and composed his love poems, the Amores around the time of Virgil’s death. Even in a different genre, Ovid cannot help but be aware of the Aeneid’s presence; but when he did come to write his own epic poem, he chose to give us an alternative to the traditional, monolithic narrative. The Metamorphoses deconstructs epic poetry and is a brilliantly daring composition in its own right. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Virgil was undoubtedly very well-read: he had a deep knowledge of the epics of Homer and Ennius, as well as a myriad of other Greek and Roman poets. In this lecture, we shall look at the way that Virgil refers back to the literary tradition and what the effect of this is. In particular, we shall investigate Virgil’s intertextual use of earlier epic poets, as well as the way in which he infuses other genres, such as tragedy and erotic poetry into the Aeneid. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Virgil’s Aeneid is the first complete Latin epic which remains to us, and it is arguably the most important literary work we have from ancient Rome. Virgil lived at a time of enormous political and social upheaval: this lecture will address the ways in which Virgil’s poetry refers to contemporary events. We shall consider the much-discussed position of Virgil as pro- or anti-Augustan, and think about whether this terminology is relevant. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Where did Roman epic poetry come from? In the third century BCE Latin literature emerged in the form of drama and epic. Ancient Greek literature was influential, and Rome’s first epic was a kind of Greek-Roman hybrid, appropriately by an author with a Latin and a Greek name; it was a Greek tale, but written in a native Italian form. This lecture will explore how Roman writers founded a distinctive style by infusing Greek epic with Roman material. We’ll also see how problematic early epic is, for it unfortunately survives only in fragments. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Where did Roman epic poetry come from? In the third century BCE Latin literature emerged in the form of drama and epic. Ancient Greek literature was influential, and Rome’s first epic was a kind of Greek-Roman hybrid, appropriately by an author with a Latin and a Greek name; it was a Greek tale, but written in a native Italian form. This lecture will explore how Roman writers founded a distinctive style by infusing Greek epic with Roman material. We’ll also see how problematic early epic is, for it unfortunately survives only in fragments. Copyright 2014 Rhiannon Evans / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.