Calling Rome without names: the timeless pastoral of “Calpurnius Siculus"
5:00pm - 7:00pm /
Tuesday 29th November 2016
/ Venue: Lecture Theatre 1
8 Abercromby Square
L69 7WZ Abercromby SQ (south)
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Calling Rome without names: the timeless pastoral of “Calpurnius Siculus”, Dr Tom Geue, School of Classics, Universiy of St Andrew's
The seven eclogues of 'Calpurnius Siculus' have always been difficult to date: after years of watching them slapped back and forth across the first few centuries of the Roman principate, we are still no closer to a definitive context against which to read the poems, though most scholars now opt for a Neronian date out of exhaustion and inertia. This paper will shift the hypothesis to try to cut through the Gordian knot: it will assume that the poetry itself aims for a state of 'timelessness', and resists the prisons of context, by suppressing historical names and references. In the process, it will try to probe the restrictive forms of 'context' we habitually bring to bear in historicist readings of classical literature.
The seven eclogues of 'Calpurnius Siculus' have always been difficult to date: after years of watching them slapped back and forth across the first few centuries of the Roman principate, we are still no closer to a definitive context against which to read the poems, though most scholars now opt for a Neronian date out of exhaustion and inertia. This paper will shift the hypothesis to try to cut through the Gordian knot: it will assume that the poetry itself aims for a state of 'timelessness', and resists the prisons of context, by suppressing historical names and references. In the process, it will try to probe the restrictive forms of 'context' we habitually bring to bear in historicist readings of classical literature.