Seminar - Forum Antiquum Leiden - Damien Nelis

Damien Nelis (Genève) - Title: Ennius and Callimachus. The Aetia and Latin Epic

Abstract: In this talk I will revisit the relationship between Ennius and Callimachus and its place in reconstructions of the literary history of Greek and Latin poetry. In his magisterial The Annals of Quintus Ennius (1985), Otto Skutsch interpreted the proem of Ennius’ epic in light of the prologue of the Aetia and what he called a ‘Callimachean ban on epic’. Ten years after the publication of Skutsch’s great edition, Alan Cameron argued in Callimachus and his Critics (1995) that the prologue of the Aetia had nothing to do with the epic genre, thereby apparently removing the very basis of Skutsch’s whole approach. As Latinists continue to look for ways of coming to terms with Cameron’s ambitious study of Callimachus and Hellenistic poetry more widely, the debate about Ennius’ use of Callimachus has not been the subject of a major reappraisal, to the best of my knowledge, even if broader questions about the ‘Hellenistic’ nature of early Latin poetry have been the topic considerable debate. My aim, therefore, will be to survey the state of current research on the Annales, the Aetia, and the history of the reception of Hellenistic poetry in Rome, in order to see whether any new light can be said on an old problem.

The speaker: Danien Nelis is professor of Latin at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He is famous for his work on Hellenistic and Roman poetry. He has published widely, among others on Vergil’s engagement with Apollonius Rhodius, Augustan poetry and the Roman republic, emotions in Roman literature, Lucan’s influence on Claudian, and Flavian poetry.