Classical World

Keith and Edmondson’s festschrift for the late R. Elaine Fantham is a testament to the power of a single work to influence an entire discipline. Adapting their title from Fantham’s social history of Roman literature,¹ the editors have [End Page 439] compiled thirteen contributions from friends, colleagues, students, and admirers that span a chronological breadth of four hundred years and examine genres ranging from Menippean satire to Latin elegy, from drama to epic, and from letters to law. Inspired by Fantham, authors combine close readings with historical explication to produce snapshots of a given cultural moment and the place of a text within that moment.

The collection is divided into three sections. Part 1, “Domestic Politics,” places texts set in the Roman house alongside contemporary political debates, demonstrating that even literature claiming to be nonpolitical cannot escape politics. In part 2, “Revolutionary Poetics,” contributors explore genre, allusion, and intertextuality, particularly in Ovid. Contributions to part 3, “Civic Spectacle,” increase our understanding of the role of the citizenry in public ceremonies and the politics of empire. Although papers rarely cross-reference each other, the strength of the volume derives from themes that are richly represented in Fantham’s scholarship and cross the structural divide, including genre and gender, status and class. This review follows the order of the volume in general, highlighting intra-volume connections.

The study of Roman literary cultures demands that scholars examine a range of sources, including authors outside of the canon, under-studied genres, and material evidence. Christer Bruun and Jarrett Welsh offer innovative readings of fragmentary texts: Bruun uses a fragment of Varro (Men. fr. 531–532) as a springboard for a discussion of Roman flooring techniques and “aquatic luxury” in the Roman house, while Welsh provides a new apparatus criticus for a fragment of Afranius’ Vopiscus (378–382 Ribbeck) that contributes to our understanding of gendered language in fabulae togatae. Gender and social relations are at the heart of three essays concerning the household. Alison Keith argues that the overlap in names of slave women and freedwomen on inscriptions from Rome and in Augustan elegy is resonant of imperial conquest. By aligning rape narratives in book 2 of Ovid’s Fasti with the Augustan marriage legislation, Fanny Dolansky concludes that these narratives criticize the attempts of the princeps to exert control over the domestic sphere. Sarah Blake interrogates the phrase in manus in the letters of Pliny the Younger in order to illustrate the role of slavery in Pliny’s literary identity and in the production of his work.

Close textual analysis is likewise fundamental to arguments concerning the subversion of genre. Genre-bending becomes a political act that allows readers to understand ideals of republicanism, civic participation, and the relationship between a poet and his predecessors (or poet and princeps). Whereas Ovid’s Re-media Amoris exploits the possibilities of didactic elegy (Barbara Weiden Boyd), Ovid’s Metamorphoses expands the boundaries of pastoral (Sarah McCallum), and Ovid displays his own generic innovation through the creation of narrative segues (C. W. Marshall). Lucan destabilizes the boundaries of elegy and epic (Cedric Littlewood). Intertextual moments between Silius’ Hannibal and the Aeneid allow us to see a cycle of revenge in Vergil (Elizabeth Kennedy).

Part 3 includes the broadest range of texts, as authors demonstrate that class and social roles are an inherent concern of Roman religion and spectacle, even in the provinces. Clifford Ando examines legal and political documents that indicate Rome’s acceptance of foreign cults, demonstrating the importance of empires to acknowledge, manage, and cultivate difference in order to govern effectively. Jonathan Tracy returns to the theme of genre, suggesting that Lucan combines scientific didactic and heroic epic in an essay on Lucan’s republicanism; [End Page 440] unlike the tyrannical Caesar, Cato makes decisions publicly, educating his men to appreciate and fight for libertas. In...