Boris Kayachev - Böcker

This volume offers the first comprehensive literary and philological commentary on the Lydia, in any language. At its core is a freshly edited Latin text of the poem, which systematically reconsiders the paradosis as well as earlier textual scholarship and endorses numerous improvements against current editions. Besides scrutinizing all the textual problems and adopted solutions, the commentary provides a thorough linguistic exegesis of the text as well as a wide-ranging discussion of the poem's rich intertextuality, both Latin and Greek. The Lydia's literary side is also the main focus in the introduction, which challenges the established communis opinio that views the Lydia as a dateless anonymous imitation of Virgilian bucolic, by situating it in the literary context of the Late Republic: it highlights, for the first time, the centrality of Greek bucolic, in particular of Bion's Lament for Adonis and the anonymous Lament for Bion, in the Lydia's literary genealogy and tentatively revives the old attribution to Valerius Cato, as well as exploring the poem's relationship with its better-known sibling, the Dirae. The work is complete with an English translation, aimed to serve as a guide to the Latin text for readers without a solid background in the ancient language.

The Ciris is a small-scale epic poem which relates the myth of Scylla, daughter of king Nisus of Megara, who betrayed her homeland for love and was transformed into a sea-bird, ciris. It is one of the poems in the Appendix Vergiliana, a collection that has been ascribed to Virgil as his carmina minora. Earlier scholarship has mostly been concerned to prove that the Ciris is not by Virgil, and then to demonstrate that it is a late and derivative composition of little intrinsic merit. The present book aims to bring the poem to the attention of modern readers and to rescue it from ill-deserved neglect. It argues that the Ciris was composed by a contemporary of Virgil, a product of the golden age of Latin poetry. The introduction presents detailed linguistic, literary and historical arguments in support of this early composition date and also offers a state-of-the-art account of the textual witnesses and the manuscript tradition. The critical text and apparatus are based on a systematic first-hand analysis of manuscript evidence as well as the rigorous application of text-critical methods. The new text, as close to the original Ciris as can be achieved, includes over one-hundred and fifty changes from previous editions. By engaging with textual scholarship on the poem from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century, the line-by-line commentary provides a comprehensive guide to the numerous textual problems, and is an important contribution to the stylistic and linguistic analysis of golden-age Latin poetry.

The Dirae is a curse uttered, in bucolic hexameters, by an Italian farmer against his former estate – confiscated to enable the settlement of Caesarian veterans in the aftermath of the battle of Philippi: this commentary is the first work, in eighty years, to offer a systematic exploration of the poem within the literary and historical context of the Late Republic. At the heart of the volume is a freshly edited Latin text, based on a thorough reappraisal of manuscript evidence and earlier textual scholarship, which in particular aims to restore the poem's stanzaic organisation, gravely distorted in the course of transmission. Besides providing an account of the manuscripts and an overview of the poem's structure and contents, the introduction discusses at length the Dirae's engagement with other poetic texts and traditions, first of all with its 'sibling' the Lydia, but also, crucially, with Greek bucolic, before considering its reception in Virgil's Eclogues and later Augustan poetry; it sheds new light too on the Dirae's links with Hellenistic curse poetry and with the ritual tradition of inscribed curses. Endorsing a composition period shortly after the poem's dramatic date (spring–summer of 41 BC) and tentatively reviving the old attribution to Valerius Cato, the introduction also explores the Dirae's engagement with the political events and narratives of one of the most dramatic moments of Roman history. The line-by-line commentary provides exegesis of the poem's textual, linguistic, literary and historical aspects, with the English translation offering a further point of orientation.