Travel, Geography, and Empire in Latin Poetry

Description

This volume considers representations of space and movement in sources ranging from Roman comedy to late antique verse to explore how poetry in the Roman world is fundamentally shaped by its relationship to travel within and the geography of Rome's far-reaching empire. The volume surveys Roman poetics of travel and geography in sources ranging from Plautus to Augustan poetry, from the Flavians to Ausonius. The chapters offer a range of approaches to: the complex relationship between Latin poetry, Roman identity, imperialism, and travel and geospatial narratives; and the diachronic and generic evolutions of poetic descriptions of space and mobility. In addition, two chapters, including the concluding one, contextualize and respond to the volume's discussion of poetry by looking at ways in which Romans not only write and read poems about travel and geography, but also make writing and reading part of the experience of traveling, as demonstrated in their epigraphic practices. The collection as a whole offers important insights into Roman poetics and into ancient notions of movement and geographical space. Travel, Geography, and Empire in Latin Poetry will be of interest to specialists in Latin poetry, ancient travel, and Latin epigraphy as well as to those studying travel writing, geography, imperialism, and mobility in other periods. The chapters are written to be accessible to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Figures Contributors Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Traversing empire Contexts Mapping the volume Further directions Notes Works cited 2. The stage at the fair: trade and human trafficking in the palliata Scenes of exchange Human bodies as the object of trade onstage: somantics Where do we go from here? Notes Works cited 3. Expanding geographies and unbounded subjects in Catullus The whole wide world: poems 11, 29, 39, 84, 95, 115 velut prati | ultimi flos (11.22-23): poems 11, 63, 10, 28, 68, 101 Conclusion: usque ad Hyperboreos et mare ad Oceanum (115.6) Notes Works cited 4. Arcadia and the Roman imagination Roman Arcadia Arcadian metamorphoses Arcadia in the Eclogues A further chapter Conclusion Notes Works cited 5. Women's travels in Latin elegy Notes Works cited 6. On the road with Tibullus: aporia or castration as the way of love Notes Works cited 7. Competing itineraries, travel, and urban subjectivity in Ovid's Ars Amatoria Urban travel in the Ars Amatoria: first walking itinerary The poetics of movement and gender in Ars Amatoria 1 Women's urban travel in Ars 3 The cultural significance of strolling in the porticoes Notes Works cited 8. Statius' prompempitkon and the geopoetics of Silvae 3.2 Beginnings: Silv. 3.2.1-100 Celer's travels: Silv. 3.2.101-141 Statius and Lucan Statius and Lucan on the Bay of Naples Notes Works cited 9. Martial, Spain, and the dancers from Gades: travel and identity in Flavian epigram Notes Works cited 10. Memory spaces of Ausonius and Rutilius Namatianus I The Moselle between Garonne and Tiber II From Rome to Gaul via nostalgia III Mapping memory spaces IV Texts in search of a genre Conclusion Notes Works cited 11. Travelers and texts: reading, writing, and communication on the roads of the Roman West Texts to aid travelers Epigraphy addressing travelers Epigraphy recording travel Conclusion Notes Works cited Index