Thomas Biggs – författare

Poetics of the First Punic War investigates the literary afterlives of Rome’s first conflict with Carthage. From its original role in the Middle Republic as the narrative proving ground for epic’s development out of verse historiography, to its striking cultural reuse during the Augustan and Flavian periods, the First Punic War (264–241 BCE) holds an underappreciated place in the history of Latin literature. Because of the serendipitous meeting of historical content and poetic form in the third century BCE, a textualized First Punic War went on to shape the Latin language and its literary genres, the practices and politics of remembering war, popular visions of Rome as a cultural capital, and numerous influential conceptions of Punic North Africa. Poetics of the First Punic War combines innovative theoretical approaches with advances in the philological analysis of Latin literature to reassess the various “texts” of the First Punic War, including those composed by Vergil, Propertius, Horace, and Silius Italicus. This book also contains sustained treatment of Naevius’ fragmentary Bellum Punicum (Punic War) and Livius Andronicus’ Odusia (Odyssey), some of the earliest works of Latin poetry. As the tradition’s primary Roman topic, the First Punic War is forever bound to these poems, which played a decisive role in transmitting an epic view of history.

This volume explores journeys across time and space in Greek and Latin literature, taking as its starting point the paradigm of travel offered by the epic genre. The epic journey is central to the dynamics of classical literature, offering a powerful lens through which characters, authors, and readers experience their real and imaginary worlds. The journey informs questions of identity formation, narrative development, historical emplotment, and constructions of heroism - topics that move through and beyond the story itself. The act of moving to and from 'home' - both a fixed point of spatial orientation and a transportable set of cultural values - thus represents a physical journey and an intellectual process. In exploring its many manifestations, the chapters in this collection reconceive the centrality of the epic journey across a wide variety of genres and historical contexts, from Homer to the moon.

This volume explores journeys across time and space in Greek and Latin literature, taking as its starting point the paradigm of travel offered by the epic genre. The epic journey is central to the dynamics of classical literature, offering a powerful lens through which characters, authors, and readers experience their real and imaginary worlds. The journey informs questions of identity formation, narrative development, historical emplotment, and constructions of heroism - topics that move through and beyond the story itself. The act of moving to and from ''home'' - both a fixed point of spatial orientation and a transportable set of cultural values - thus represents a physical journey and an intellectual process. In exploring its many manifestations, the chapters in this collection reconceive the centrality of the epic journey across a wide variety of genres and historical contexts, from Homer to the moon.

This volume explores journeys across time and space in Greek and Latin literature, taking as its starting point the paradigm of travel offered by the epic genre. The epic journey is central to the dynamics of classical literature, offering a powerful lens through which characters, authors, and readers experience their real and imaginary worlds. The journey informs questions of identity formation, narrative development, historical emplotment, and constructions of heroism - topics that move through and beyond the story itself. The act of moving to and from ''home'' - both a fixed point of spatial orientation and a transportable set of cultural values - thus represents a physical journey and an intellectual process. In exploring its many manifestations, the chapters in this collection reconceive the centrality of the epic journey across a wide variety of genres and historical contexts, from Homer to the moon.

Plautus’ Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian) is a work of staggering literary andhistorical significance. Performed in the long shadow of Rome’s struggle withHannibal’s Carthage, this play stages the restoration of a Carthaginian familydivided through enslavement. Set against the backdrop of a Greece marked bycomedic expectations and the geography of contemporary imperial conquest,Poenulus presents a tale of Carthaginian heartbreak and heartache to a postwarRoman audience. The comedy’s remarkable diversity prompts audienceinteraction with a wide range of socio-cultural topics relevant to Plautus’ time.Engaging weighty matters through song, slapstick, puns, and spectacle, Poenulusmay appear to defang, but its bite is deep.This book offers an innovative understanding of Poenulus’ place in Roman historyand literary culture, helping readers to appreciate the play itself, the complexnature of Plautine authorship, and the cultures of performance in RepublicanRome. Most of the book explores the play as a performance, from its unique andstrikingly self-aware prologue to the actors’ call for applause in the final line.The longest chapter examines the play’s afterlives in the Renaissance and earlymodern period, including little-known revivals and adaptations in Ferrara, Rome,and Cambridge. Over the centuries, people have found in Poenulus a script wellsuited to active learning in the Latin classroom, a text capable of supportingnew political ideologies, and a dramatized vision of the world that accordedwith processes of racialization in Europe as reengagement with the classical pastcoincided with the expansion of the slave trade and the objectification of BlackAfricans. That one play has been seen to support and subvert the same outlooksand practices is a testament to its complexity and to the enduring power of all Plautine verse from the third century BCE to the present.

Plautus' Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian) is a work of staggering literary andhistorical significance. Performed in the long shadow of Rome's struggle withHannibal's Carthage, this play stages the restoration of a Carthaginian familydivided through enslavement. Set against the backdrop of a Greece marked bycomedic expectations and the geography of contemporary imperial conquest,Poenulus presents a tale of Carthaginian heartbreak and heartache to a postwarRoman audience. The comedy's remarkable diversity prompts audienceinteraction with a wide range of socio-cultural topics relevant to Plautus' time.Engaging weighty matters through song, slapstick, puns, and spectacle, Poenulusmay appear to defang, but its bite is deep.This book offers an innovative understanding of Poenulus' place in Roman historyand literary culture, helping readers to appreciate the play itself, the complexnature of Plautine authorship, and the cultures of performance in RepublicanRome. Most of the book explores the play as a performance, from its unique andstrikingly self-aware prologue to the actors' call for applause in the final line.The longest chapter examines the play's afterlives in the Renaissance and earlymodern period, including little-known revivals and adaptations in Ferrara, Rome,and Cambridge. Over the centuries, people have found in Poenulus a script wellsuited to active learning in the Latin classroom, a text capable of supportingnew political ideologies, and a dramatized vision of the world that accordedwith processes of racialization in Europe as reengagement with the classical pastcoincided with the expansion of the slave trade and the objectification of BlackAfricans. That one play has been seen to support and subvert the same outlooksand practices is a testament to its complexity and to the enduring power of all Plautine verse from the third century BCE to the present.