Orestis Tragoedia

This is the first English translation of Dracontius’ Orestes, a Latin poem from Vandal North Africa that tells the mythic story of the cycle of murder and vengeance suffered by the family of Agamemnon. This book provides the reader with a highly accurate and readable English translation of the Orestes, which is accessible for both scholarly and non-scholarly readers; it is accompanied by a full introduction and notes. The introduction discusses the literary, educational and rhetorical culture of Vandal North Africa, as well as the most important literary aspects of the Orestes including its major themes, the main literary influences upon it and its structure and style. Roche also includes a biography of Dracontius and examines the Orestes’ relationship to his other poetry, to his Christianity and to the Vandals. The notes explain all important allusions to earlier literature, they highlight themes and issues raised by each section of the poem, and they provide a comprehensive overview of each section of the work so that all readers can understand and appreciate the Orestes against the backdrop of ancient and late-antique literature. Dracontius’ Orestes is of interest to students and scholars of ancient literature, especially the Latin poetry of late antiquity, ancient epics, the reception of tragedy and comparative literature. It is also suitable for scholars of late antiquity and the general reader interested in the ancient world more broadly.

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A reader of the epyllion by Dracontius, the elegy by Maximianus, and the epigram by Luxorius should not expect that these works--and these new embodiments of the 'old' genres--will be wholly identical with their 'archetypes'. Were it so, it would mean that we read but second-rate versifiers, indeed. We may expect rather that thanks to the reading of Dracontius's epyllion, Maximianus's elegy, and Luxorius's epigram our understanding of these very genres may become fuller and deeper than if it was narrowed only to the study of the 'classical phase' of the Roman literature. Therefore, I have decided to employ in the title of my book the expression genres rediscovered. I have found it fair to emphasize that the poets whose works have been studied here merit appreciation for their creativity, and indeed courage, in reusing and reinterpreting the classical--and truly classic--literary heritage. In addition, I have found it similarly fair to stress that for the students of Latin literature the borderline between the 'classical' and the 'post-classical' is, and should be, flexible. It is not my intention of course to imply that aesthetic and poetological differences should be ignored or blurred. Quite the reverse, these differences are profound and multidimensional and as such must be properly understood and explained. The main issue is the fact that studies of Latin literature--or rather of literature in general - and especially generic studies require a proper, i.e. diachronic, perspective. A description of a certain genre based merely on its most important or generally known representative/representatives will always risk becoming incomplete and limited. In genology, one must be utterly prudent in defining the 'main' and the 'marginal', the 'relevant' and the 'negligible'. In this sense, an insight into a few genres practiced by some 'classical'--and classic--Roman poets from the perspective of their 'post-classical' followers may be, also for a genologist, an intriguing rediscovery.

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Classicizing Christian poetry has largely been neglected by literary scholars, but has recently been receiving growing attention, especially the poetry written in Latin. One of the objectives of this volume is to redress the balance by allowing more space to discussions of Greek Christian poetry. The contributions collected here ask how Christian poets engage with (and are conscious of) the double reliance of their poetry on two separate systems: on the one hand, the classical poetic models and, on the other, the various genres and sub-genres of Christian prose. Keeping in mind the different settings of the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West, the contributions seek to understand the impact of historical setting on genre, the influence of the paideia shared by authors and audiences, and the continued relevance of traditional categories of literary genre. While our immediate focus is genre, most of the contributions also engage with the ideological ramifications of the transposition of Christian themes into classicizing literature. This volume offers important and original case studies on the reception and appropriation of the classical past and its literary forms by Christian poetry.