Inhabiting a lettered world: exploring the fringes of Roman writing habits

Based on a survey of the evidence for perishable and liminal Roman material writing habits that might appropriately be described as ‘fringe epigraphy’, this paper invites a conceptual re-evaluation of writing and the role of letters, words, and texts – including their perception – in the Roman world. It thus challenges recent attempts of an all too narrow disciplinary, institutional view of what might constitute Latin epigraphy. Much rather, it is argued, it seems appropriate to think of the Roman world as a fundamentally lettered one – a world that is not only described and perceived, but, in actual fact, even imagined and explained in such terms, allowing for fluid transitions from monumental to informal, from serious and communication-driven to playful, pointless, and sensational, and ultimately from real to imagined

Getting on top of things: form and meaning in the pseudo-Vergilian Aetna

This article offers a fresh view on the poetics of the pseudo-Vergilian poem Aetna, proposing a carefully planned and executed structure which is supported through a deliberate arrangement of key terms in the poem as well as a network of verbal cross-reference

How the Romans read funerary inscriptions: neglected evidence from the Querolus

The late antique comedy Querolus (or Aulularia) makes a number of references to the ways in which the text of an inscribed urn was read. This is important, hitherto neglected evidence for the way in which encounters and interactions with inscribed objects, especially from a funerary sphere, were imagined in the Roman world. Based on an in-depth discussion of relevant passages, initial conclusions are drawn and linked to related phrases and passages in surviving epigraphic evidence, giving reason to rethink the multi-layered, complex sensuous experience that is commonly just referred to as ‘reading inscriptions’

A la altura del tema: Forma y contenido en el Etna pseudovirgiliano

Este artículo ofrece una visión renovada sobre los aspectos poéticos del poema pseudovirgiliano Etna, explicando su estructura cuidadosamente pensada y ejecutada, que se asienta en una ordenación deliberada de los términos clave del poema, así como también en una cadena de referencias verbales cruzadas.This article offers a fresh view on the poetics of the pseudo-Vergilian poem Aetna, proposing a carefully planned and executed structure which is supported through a deliberate arrangement of key terms in the poem as well as a network of verbal cross-references

I, Claudian: the syntactical and metrical alignment of ego in Claudian and his epic predecessors

This article provides an analysis of the syntactical and metrical alignment of the subject pronoun of the first person singular in Latin epic. Based on the observation that, due to its prosody, ego may only feature in a certain number of sedes within the dactylic hexameter line, a quantitative and qualitative argument is made for a careful distinction between emphatic and unstressed uses in relation to consistent patterns of metrical and syntactical collocation