Scholarship on Roman satire has been dominated for nearly fifty years by a rhetorical approach that emphasizes the artifice of the poet. Consequently, it has been unsure what to do with the philosophical material in Horace's Sermones. In my dissertation, I argue for the importance of Epicurean philosophy in the interpretative scheme of Horace's satiric oeuvre. Epicurean ideas appear prominently and repeatedly, mostly in a positive light, and respond to the concerns and philosophical prejudices of Horace's closest friends. In the prologue, I explore how Horace himself inscribes the process of interpreting and responding to a satire into S. 2.8. He frames his reading circle as key observers in the satiric scene that unfolds before them, suggesting the importance of the audience to satire. Chapter one builds upon this vision by emphasizing reader response as a key element of satiric theory. Satire, as a participant in the cultural debates of its day, orients itself toward a like-minded group of readers who are expected to grasp the satiric thrust of the text and understand its nuances. It orients itself against outsiders who respond seriously to the text in some fashion, often failing to realize that satire is even occurring. I term this process the satiric effect. Chapter two demonstrates that Horace's closest friends in his reading circle share connections to Epicureanism. The social dynamics of reading circles reinforce my theoretical emphasis upon the satiric audience. Vergil, Varius, Plotius Tucca, and Quintilius Varus studied with the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus whose treatises also offer insight into the social dynamics of an Epicurean circle. Chapter three explores how Sermones I articulates itself toward Horace's reading circle. Given the Epicurean biases present within Horace's reading circle, I explore an interpretation through the lens of these Epicurean preferences. Chapters four and five emphasize that the philosophical themes initiated by Horace in the first book also run through the second, making it more cohesive than previously thought, but only become apparent when we consider them from the particular mindset of the reading circle. I conclude by noting possible extensions for my literary theory in other authors. / text

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Recentemente, tem aumentado o interesse acadêmico nas figurações do Baco romano, que, até então, não havia recebido tanta atenção quanto o Dioniso grego. Novos estudos têm mostrado como o repertório dionisíaco proliferou no Período Augustano, produzindo novas metáforas atreladas às transformações sociais, políticas e culturais da época. Horácio, o poeta que mais desenvolveu os temas dionisíacos entre os augustanos, apresenta diversas facetas do deus em diferentes gêneros poéticos, reservando a ele um lugar de destaque em suas Odes. Esta pesquisa preenche uma lacuna nos estudos de poética latina, discutindo questões associadas a Baco e ao simpósio em Horácio, tendo em vista os papéis do deus como herói deificado, divindade simpótica e orgiástica e patrono da poesia, em associação a temas como o amor, a política, a guerra, a patronagem e a composição poética. A tese divide-se em seis capítulos: dois capítulos introdutórios em que são considerados antecedentes e aspectos gerais de Baco e do simpósio, e quatro capítulos com a análise desses temas em Horácio. No terceiro capítulo, o enfoque é sobre o furor dionisíaco como impulso poético. Nos capítulos quatro e cinco, o simpósio - presidido por Líber - é observado como um cenário metafórico em que a persona poética de Horácio relaciona-se com amantes, patronos, poetas e amigos; um lugar onde o vinho combina com política, guerra, amor, amizade e poesia. No capítulo final, são analisadas questões de composição poética associadas ao engenho e ao furor poético dionisíacos. / Recently, scholarly interest in the representations of the Roman Bacchus has increased, which had not received as much attention as the Greek Dionysus. New studies have shown how the dionysiac repertoire proliferated in the Augustan Age, producing new metaphors linked to cultural, social and political transformations that took place in the period. Horace, who is the most prolific of the Augustan poets in the use of dionysiac imagery, presents different aspects of the god in different genres, reserving a special place to him in his Odes. This research fulfills a gap in the studies of Latin poetics, exploring issues associated with Bacchus and the symposium in Horace, considering the gods roles as deified hero, sympotic and orgiastic divinity and patron of poetry in association with themes such as love, politics, war, patronage and poetic composition. The thesis is divided into six chapters, with two introductory chapters on the antecedents and general aspects of Bacchus and the symposium, and four chapters with an analysis of these themes in Horace. In the third chapter, I investigate the Bacchic enthusiasm as a metaphor for the poetic impulse. In chapters and four and five, I observe the symposium - presided over by Liber - as a metaphorical setting where the poet interacts with lovers, patrons, other poets and friends; a place where wine combines with politics, war, love, friendship and poetry. In the last chapter, I consider issues of poetic composition connected with dionysiac ingenium and poetic furor.

In this thesis, I explore the construction of female erotic desire in Ovid’s work as it is represented in the form of mythical heroines. Phaedra-like figures appear in Ovid’s poetry as dangerous spectres of wildly inappropriate and therefore destructive, bestial, or incestuous sexuality. I consider in particular the catalogue of Phaedra-like figures in Ars Amatoria 1.283-340, Phaedra in Heroides 4, Byblis in Metamorphoses 9.439-665, and Iphis in Metamorphoses 9.666-797. Their tales act as a threat of punishment for any inappropriate desire. They represent for the normative sexual subject a sexual desire which has been excluded, and what could happen, what the normative subject could become, were he or she to transgress taboos and laws governing sexual relations. I apply the idea of the abject, as it has been formulated by Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler, in order to elucidate Ovid’s process of constructing such a subject in his poetry. I also consider Butler’s theories of the performativity of sex, gender, and kinship roles in relation to the continued maintenance of the normative and abject subject positions his poetry creates. The intersection of “performance” and performativity is crucial to the representation of the heroines as paradigms of female desire. Ovid’s engagement with his literary predecessors in the genre of tragedy, in particular Euripides’ and Sophocles’ tragedies featuring Phaedra, highlights the idea of dramatically “performing” a role, e.g., the role of incestuous step-mother. Such a spotlight on “performance” in all of these literary representations reveals the performativity of culturally defined gender and kinship roles. Ovid’s ludic representations, or “citations,” of Phaedra, I argue, both reinvest cultural stereotypes of women’s sexuality with authority through their repetition and introduce new possibilities of feminine subjectivity and sexuality through the variations in each iteration.

This dissertation investigates how Augustan poetry imagines, redefines and reconfigures the idea of the chorus. It argues that the chorus, a quintessential marker of Greek culture, was translated and transformed into a peculiarly Roman phenomenon whereby poets invented their relationship with an imagined past and implicated it in the present. Augustan poets, I suggest, created a sustained and intensely intertextual choral poetics that played into contemporary poetic debates about the power of writing versus song and the complexity of responding to performance culture through multiple layers of written tradition. Focusing in particular on Virgil’s Aeneid, Propertius’ Elegies and Horace’s Odes, the dissertation uses a series of case studies to trace the role played by scenes of embedded choral song and dance in Augustan poetics. The scene is set by comparing how a range of texts respond differently to a single fundamental aspect of Greek choral culture—the figure of the chorus leader—and by establishing Catullus as an important predecessor to Augustan choral discourse. The dissertation then turns to explore how choral language and imagery become involved in some of the central issues of Augustan poetry: Latin love poetry’s construction of female desirability and male anxiety, the creation of poetic authority in Augustan lyric and elegy, and the search for the origins of Roman ritual in Virgil’s Aeneid. Finally, these embedded scenes are juxtaposed with Horace’s Carmen Saeculare, a text composed, remarkably, for choral performance on the Roman civic stage, which is shown to activate the choral metaphor that had been created by the Latin literary imagination. By demonstrating Augustan poetry’s engagement with this aspect of Greek performance culture, the study sheds new light on the relationship between Greek and Roman poetry, shifting the focus from the reinvention of Greek genres and the study of particular sites of allusion towards an understanding of the complex dynamics of reception and reconfiguration at work in these poets’ reappropriation of both a literary and cultural idea. / The Classics

In this thesis, I explore the construction of female erotic desire in Ovid’s work as it is represented in the form of mythical heroines. Phaedra-like figures appear in Ovid’s poetry as dangerous spectres of wildly inappropriate and therefore destructive, bestial, or incestuous sexuality. I consider in particular the catalogue of Phaedra-like figures in Ars Amatoria 1.283-340, Phaedra in Heroides 4, Byblis in Metamorphoses 9.439-665, and Iphis in Metamorphoses 9.666-797. Their tales act as a threat of punishment for any inappropriate desire. They represent for the normative sexual subject a sexual desire which has been excluded, and what could happen, what the normative subject could become, were he or she to transgress taboos and laws governing sexual relations. I apply the idea of the abject, as it has been formulated by Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler, in order to elucidate Ovid’s process of constructing such a subject in his poetry. I also consider Butler’s theories of the performativity of sex, gender, and kinship roles in relation to the continued maintenance of the normative and abject subject positions his poetry creates. The intersection of “performance” and performativity is crucial to the representation of the heroines as paradigms of female desire. Ovid’s engagement with his literary predecessors in the genre of tragedy, in particular Euripides’ and Sophocles’ tragedies featuring Phaedra, highlights the idea of dramatically “performing” a role, e.g., the role of incestuous step-mother. Such a spotlight on “performance” in all of these literary representations reveals the performativity of culturally defined gender and kinship roles. Ovid’s ludic representations, or “citations,” of Phaedra, I argue, both reinvest cultural stereotypes of women’s sexuality with authority through their repetition and introduce new possibilities of feminine subjectivity and sexuality through the variations in each iteration.

Mythological figures play a number of roles in literature: they may, of course, appear in person as developed characters, but they may also contribute more indirectly, as part of the substratum from which rhetorical argument or literary characterisation are constructed, or as a background against which other literary strategies (for example, the rewriting of epic or the appropriation of Greek culture by the Romans) can be marked out. This thesis sets out to examine the way in which the figure of Penelope emerges from unknown origins, acquires portrayal in almost canonical form in Homer's Odyssey, and then takes part in the subsequent interplay of Homeric and other literary allusions throughout later Classical literature (with chapters focusing particularly on fifth-century Greek tragedy, Hellenistic poetry, and Augustan poetry). In particular, it focuses on the manner in which, despite the potential complexities of the character and the possible variants in her story, she became quintessentially a stereotypical figure. In addition to considering example where Penelope is evoked by name, a case is also made for the thesis that allusion, or intertextual reference, could also evoke Penelope for an ancient audience. A central point of discussion is what perception of Penelope would be called to mind by intertextual reference. The importance of approaching relationships between ancient texts in intertextual terms rather terms of strict "allusion" is thus demonstrated. The formation of the simplified picture is considered in the light of folk-tale motifs, rhetorical simplification of myth, and favoured story patterns. The appendices include a summary of the myth of Penelope with all attested variants, and a comprehensive list of explicit references to her in classical literature.

Recentemente, tem aumentado o interesse acadêmico nas figurações do Baco romano, que, até então, não havia recebido tanta atenção quanto o Dioniso grego. Novos estudos têm mostrado como o repertório dionisíaco proliferou no Período Augustano, produzindo novas metáforas atreladas às transformações sociais, políticas e culturais da época. Horácio, o poeta que mais desenvolveu os temas dionisíacos entre os augustanos, apresenta diversas facetas do deus em diferentes gêneros poéticos, reservando a ele um lugar de destaque em suas Odes. Esta pesquisa preenche uma lacuna nos estudos de poética latina, discutindo questões associadas a Baco e ao simpósio em Horácio, tendo em vista os papéis do deus como herói deificado, divindade simpótica e orgiástica e patrono da poesia, em associação a temas como o amor, a política, a guerra, a patronagem e a composição poética. A tese divide-se em seis capítulos: dois capítulos introdutórios em que são considerados antecedentes e aspectos gerais de Baco e do simpósio, e quatro capítulos com a análise desses temas em Horácio. No terceiro capítulo, o enfoque é sobre o furor dionisíaco como impulso poético. Nos capítulos quatro e cinco, o simpósio - presidido por Líber - é observado como um cenário metafórico em que a persona poética de Horácio relaciona-se com amantes, patronos, poetas e amigos; um lugar onde o vinho combina com política, guerra, amor, amizade e poesia. No capítulo final, são analisadas questões de composição poética associadas ao engenho e ao furor poético dionisíacos. / Recently, scholarly interest in the representations of the Roman Bacchus has increased, which had not received as much attention as the Greek Dionysus. New studies have shown how the dionysiac repertoire proliferated in the Augustan Age, producing new metaphors linked to cultural, social and political transformations that took place in the period. Horace, who is the most prolific of the Augustan poets in the use of dionysiac imagery, presents different aspects of the god in different genres, reserving a special place to him in his Odes. This research fulfills a gap in the studies of Latin poetics, exploring issues associated with Bacchus and the symposium in Horace, considering the gods roles as deified hero, sympotic and orgiastic divinity and patron of poetry in association with themes such as love, politics, war, patronage and poetic composition. The thesis is divided into six chapters, with two introductory chapters on the antecedents and general aspects of Bacchus and the symposium, and four chapters with an analysis of these themes in Horace. In the third chapter, I investigate the Bacchic enthusiasm as a metaphor for the poetic impulse. In chapters and four and five, I observe the symposium - presided over by Liber - as a metaphorical setting where the poet interacts with lovers, patrons, other poets and friends; a place where wine combines with politics, war, love, friendship and poetry. In the last chapter, I consider issues of poetic composition connected with dionysiac ingenium and poetic furor.

Vergil’s Georgics was published in 29 BCE, at a critical point in the political life of Octavian-Augustus. Although his position at the head of state had been confirmed by victory at Actium in 31, his longevity was threatened by his reputation for causing bloodshed during the civil wars. This thesis argues that Vergil, in the Georgics, presents a defence of Octavian against criticism of his past, in order to safeguard his future, and the future of Rome. Through a complex of metaphor and allusion, Vergil engages with the weaknesses in Octavian’s public image in order to diminish their damaging impact. Chapter One examines the way in which the poet invokes and complements the literary tradition of portraying young men as destructive, amorous creatures, through his depiction of iuvenes in the Georgics, in order to emphasise the inevitability of youthful misbehaviour. Since Octavian is still explicitly a iuvenis, he cannot be held accountable for his actions up to this point, including his role in the civil wars. The focus of Chapters Two and Three of this thesis is Vergil’s presentation of the spring season in the Georgics. Vergil’s preoccupation with spring is unorthodox in the context of agricultural didactic; under the influence of the Lucretian figure of Venus, Vergil moulds spring into a symbol of universal creation in nature, a metaphor for a projected revival of Roman affairs under Octavian’s leadership which would subsequently dominate the visual art of the Augustan period. Vergil’s spring is as concerned with the past as it is the future. Vergil stresses the fact that destructive activity can take place in spring, in the form of storms and animal violence; the farmer’s spring labor is characterised as a war against nature, which culminates in the horrific slaughter of oxen demanded by bugonia. In each case destruction is revealed as a necessary prerequisite for some form of creation: animal reproduction, increased crop yield, a renewed population of bees. Thus, the spring creation of a new Rome under Octavian will come as a direct result of the bloodshed of the civil wars, a cataclysm whose horrors are not denied, but whose outcome will ultimately be positive. Octavian is assimilated to Jupiter in his Stoic guise: a providential figure who sends fire and flood to Earth in order to improve mankind.