Nicholas Horsfall – författare

The Epic Distilled is a rich exploration of Virgil's use of sources in the Aeneid, considering elements of history, geography, mythology, and ethnography. Building on and developing the research involved in the author's monumental commentaries on the Aeneid, the volume investigates how the poem was written, what Virgil read, and why particular details are interwoven into the narrative.The volume looks beyond the Aeneid's poetry and plot to focus on the 'matter' of the epic: details of colour, material, arms, clothing, landscape, and physiology. Details which might seem trivial are revealed as carefully deliberate and highly significant. For instance, one Trojan's specifically oriental trousers are suggestive of the Trojans' non-Roman 'otherness' and fit solidly into a complex ethnographic argument.In this way, the meaning and implications of Virgil's heavily allusive style, including practices and techniques of composition, are unpicked meticulously. Particularly difficult and intricate passages are delved into and the significance of specific details, legends, arcane references, places, names, digressions, and inconsistencies are uncovered. By exposing new layers of illuminating material, The Epic Distilled offers readers a fresh approach to understanding the full intellectual texture of Virgil's epic poem.

Nicholas Horsfall was one of the most recognizable and influential Latinists of his generation. His main legacy is his work on Virgil and the five erudite commentaries on the Aeneid, but he was also a prolific writer of papers, both Virgilian and non-Virgilian. A number of Horsfall's papers, including the important 'Camilla', are translated in this volume for the first time.Stretching from 1971 to 2015, the papers are drawn from his entire output demonstrating his unparalleled ability to connect Roman poetry with history, antiquarianism, and Realien. While showcasing his unique analysis of Virgil, it also highlights Horsfall's work as both a Latinist and a Romanist, illuminating the coherence in his approach. This volume includes many Virgilian papers that have become classics--on Aeneas the colonist, and on the Aeneas-legend, for example. This does not detract from the value of the non-Virgilian papers, many of which--on the collegium poetarum, and on discussions of reading and libraries at Rome, for example--have become standard treatments of their subjects. Throughout all these works there is an astonishing degree of connection, with glimpses in many papers of his other research interests.'Nicholas Horsfall needs to be approached through his short papers, typically fresh, innovative and stimulating, and he has been so productive that nobody can claim to have had a full view of his scholarship. When it comes to placing a literary text in the frames offered by material culture, documents, landscapes, history, and by religious, legal, military and antiquarian studies, he was unrivalled.' Professor Alessandro Barchiesi, Professor of Classics, New York University.

The common man in the Roman street is beginning at last to attract the attention he deserves from specialists;his active, noisy role in the politics of the late Republic has been restored to him and now the time has come to try to look a bit further inside his head, at his culture, not in the conventionally book-defined sense of what - if anything - he read and wrote, but of the songs he sang, the dances and music he preferred, the shows he saw, the games he played, the scraps of knowledge he picked up, the Greek he learned from the Syrians across the landing, the odds and ends of the history of Rome he had picked up from statues, processions, plays. This is the first attempt to reconstruct what your average Roman talked about in the bar or in the multi-seater latrine. All Latin is translated and all due care is taken of the non-specialist's requirements.

Working “in the shadow of Eduard Norden” in the author’s own words, Nicholas Horsfall has written his own monumental commentary on Aeneid 6. This is Horsfall’s fifth large-scale commentary on the Aeneid, and as his earlier commentaries on books 7, 11, 3, and 2, this is not a commentary aimed at undergraduates. Horsfall is a commentators’ commentator writing with encyclopedic command of Virgilian scholarship for the most demanding reader. Volume One includes the introduction, text and translation, and bibliography, Volume Two includes the commentary, appendices, and indices.

Working “in the shadow of Eduard Norden” in the author’s own words, Nicholas Horsfall has written his own monumental commentary on Aeneid 6. This is Horsfall’s fifth large-scale commentary on the Aeneid, and as his earlier commentaries on books 7, 11, 3, and 2, this is not a commentary aimed at undergraduates. Horsfall is a commentators’ commentator writing with encyclopedic command of Virgilian scholarship for the most demanding reader. Volume One includes the introduction, text and translation, and bibliography, Volume Two includes the commentary, appendices, and indices.

This book is not yet another introduction to Virgil’s poetry. The editor and three contributors offer a guide to the key problems and to the most intelligent discussions.They do not hesitate to point out what we do not know, and where more work needs to be done. Apart from ample discussion of the poems and the main issues they raise, the book offers chapters on the life of Virgil, his style, and his influence on late Latin epic.

This is the first comprehensive commentary on Aeneid 11. The commentary treats fully matters of linguistic and textual interpretation, metre and prosody, grammar, lexicon and idiom, of Roman behaviour, social and ritual, as well as Virgil’s sources and the literary tradition. New critical approaches and developments in Virgilian studies have been taken into account with economy and fairness. The Latin text is presented with a facing English translation. The commentary is followed by an appendix on Penthesilea and the Epic Cycle and a second appendix which discusses the weaknesses of Aeneid 11. The book concludes with English and Latin indices.In approach and learning, this commentary continues Nicholas Horsfall’s impressive work as a commentator and will advance our understanding of the Aeneid and the poet Virgil.

This is the first detailed commentary on Aeneid 3, being some three times the size of that by R.D.Williams(1962), and aimed at the scholarly public. It treats fully the thorny problem of book 3's place in the growth of the poem, matters of linguistic and textual interpretation, metre, prosody, grammar, lexicon and idiom, as well as Virgil's sources and the literary tradition in which he writes. Full attention is given to matters geographical and nautical. New critical approaches and recent developments in Virgilian studies have been taken into account, with more attention to their spirit than to their language. A text, with translation, and three indices are included.