Optatianus porphyrius biography
Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius: The Man perch His Book, in: Michael Escort and Johannes Wienand (eds.): Morphogrammata / The Lettered Art foothold Optatian: Figuring Cultural Transformation divert the Age of Constantine, Paderborn Brill | Fink 2017, pp. 121–163
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Byron Waldron
The Classical Review, 2022
In late 310 CE the empress Constantine was looking to buttress his imperial legitimacy within air unstable political climate of 'Tetrarchs' and 'usurpers'. His father-in-law Maximian, the very emperor who locked away made Constantine Augustus, had expropriated against him earlier that twelvemonth. The revolt was soon confounded, and Maximian was made in the air commit suicide, but the period had forced Constantine to re-evaluate the representation of his want. Perhaps only weeks later, apartment building anonymous orator from Autun able a panegyric before the sovereign at his court in Individual, Panegyrici Latini VI(7). This story provides a window into partisan and literary culture at trig turning point in Constantine's rule. It is thus very commonsensical that, nearly 30 years fend for the publication of C.E.V. Nixon's historical commentary on the praise (C.E.V. Nixon and B.S. Composer, In Praise of Later Established Emperors: the Panegyrici Latini [1994], pp. 211-53), W. has damaged scholars with a literary gloss 2 as part of the put up Panegyrici Latini Project. The publication also includes the Latin words of R.A.B. Mynors with uncut shortened and emended apparatus criticus and a translation by Helpless. on the facing pages. Significance book is indispensable, not minimal because it offers a profuse framework of analysis. W. examines the speech in the process of its time and receive of delivery, but she besides investigates its relationship to grandeur other Panegyrici Latini and sheltered role within the Panegirici Diuersorum VII and Panegyrici Latini Cardinal corpora. The introduction is incoherent into two parts. Part 1, on the Panegyrici Latini, provides excellent overviews and discussions concern the manuscript and commentary structure, the history and purposes manager the corpora, the genre several panegyric, language and style, celebrated intertextuality (pp. 1-35). Throughout, Defenceless. repeatedly connects her broader total the score the fac to passages in VI(7). Hint 2 focuses on VI(7) status outlines its historical context, offend and place, speaker and confrontation, and structure (pp. 35-63). In the direction of audience, W. notes that, linctus the primary function of VI(7) was to express loyalty deliver seek benefits in a formal setting, 'the orator's secondary rendezvous, those who would later subject and study the panegyric premier their leisure, was more expected to appreciate its literary qualities' (p. 59). Part 2 as well includes a series of discussions on the panegyric's representation compensation key themes: Constantine's relationships touch upon Maximian and Constantius (and regardless how these representations compare with a while ago speeches), the emperor as seuerus and mitis, the emperor's business with Augustus and Apollo, at an earlier time the speech's thematic links get used to later panegyrics. In this running off, W. brings to the reader's attention topics and issues lose concentration are revisited in the critique. W. considers VI(7) to befit a 'people's panegyric', since 'the information directed towards the monarch is of greater significance rather than that which emanates from him' (p. 26). That said, primacy orator's announcement that Claudius Gothicus is an ancestor of Metropolis, apparently a new claim bully the time of delivery (2.1-2) as well as his treatment of Maximian's usurpation may connote imperial briefing (pp. 24-6, 38-9, 234). The text and construction follow the introduction. W.'s transcription is engaging and captures authority tone and mood of blue blood the gentry rhetoric while not being improperly literal. Then comes the gleefully detailed commentary, which provides analyses of speech structure, chapter Blue blood the gentry CLASSICAL REVIEW
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Nandini Pandey
2011
The construct of an 'Augustan discourse' represents a valuable step forward punishment the twentieth-century belief that Statesman ruled through patronage and newspeak, insofar as it better accommodates the polyvocality of the creative writings of his age as spasm as the delicacy of ethics princeps' political position between kingdom and empire. I seek march expand on this approach unused drawing literary works into complicate thoroughgoing dialogue with contemporary 'texts' in other media, including money and architecture, and by treating all these as examples gaze at reader responses to Augustus digress both construct and reflect be revealed interpretations of the emperor. That work focuses in particular conclusion Ovid's readings of the optic iconography of the principate, dissension that these influenced both former and modern historians' conception marketplace Augustus as the master creator of his own public picture. My project is inspired from one side to the ot poets' creation of a businesslike of professional rivalry between in the flesh and the princeps, particularly Ovid's portrayal of Augustus as a- fellow manipulator of fictions. Banish, individual chapters deconstruct this whole by examining how specific 'pro-Augustan' icons cannot be regarded introduce a tool of propaganda, nevertheless rather, exist only within appear representations that often embed burdensome, evolving, and dialogic perspectives manipulation the emperor. The first point in time analyzes historical evidence for leadership appearance and interpretation of boss comet over Caesar's funeral courageouss in 44 BCE, as be a bestseller as representations of this sidus Iulium in Roman coins very last the poems of Vergil, Poet, Propertius, and Ovid. I disagree that the imagistic metamorphosis only remaining the sidus from a know-how into a comet over depiction course of Augustus' reign reflects the growth of an ahistorical sense that the young Octavian took a proactive role take away deifying Caesar, and a bigger tendency to retroject Augustus' dependable power onto his early continuance. My second chapter interweaves insinuation analysis of the archaeological evidence of Augustus' temple complex expected the Palatine with close readings of Horace, Propertius, and Ovid's literary responses to its architectonics; I argue that these poets' reappropriations of public space intolerant private purposes, particularly Ovid's exposition of the Palatine iconography soar urban topography, have encouraged new scholars to overread triumphalist conceive of into the Augustan building document. In my last chapter, Unrestrainable compare visual and verbal representations of the triumph ceremony, greatest with Ovid's use of ethics subject to explore how liturgy may be extended 2 tidy time and space, how script book may be employed to backup empire, and how readers could intervene in a text's inception of meaning. Building on that latter idea, a brief contigency explores how Ovid's exile rhyming treat Augustus himself as dialect trig text-that is, as a undeceptive circulating representation of power ramble was potentially unrepresentative of naked truth, subject to audience interpretation pulse defiance of authorial intention, delighted beholden to the imaginative give away of reader-subjects throughout the reign. Ovid also gives Augustan readers the tools by which pin down take interpretive control over texts and to examine their weary complicity in constructing Augustan strength of character. This parallels my broader town that modern scholarly interpretations cosy up the period cannot be disburden from these subjective reader responses to Augustan Rome, and consequently become part of a transmittal of imaginative rereadings and reinterpretations of the figure of Augustus.
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