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CLAUDIAN'S ARMA: A METALITERARY PUN*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2015
Extract
In his article ‘On the shoulders of giants', Don Fowler argues for the identification of the Aeneid with its opening arma, saying that in post-Augustan Latin verse arma is always seen as significantly intertextual. The word may apply to the Aeneid itself, or, more generally, to imperial epic or epic in the style of Virgil.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 2015
Footnotes
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My thanks are due to the Irish Research Council for postdoctoral funding and to Damien Nelis for his helpful comments and suggestions.
References
1 Fowler, D., ‘On the shoulders of giants’, MD 39 (1997), 13–34 Google Scholar, at 20; repr. in D. Fowler, Roman Constructions (Oxford, 2000), 115–37, at 123. On Virgil's own metaliterary use of arma, see G.B. Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation (Ithaca, NY and London, 1976), 72–3.
2 On this theme, see Bloch, A., ‘“Arma virumque” als heroisches Leitmotiv’, MH 27 (1970), 206–11Google Scholar. Ovid, punningly, refers to the age of heroes, Aeneas and the Aeneid in tertia post illam successit aenea proles, | saeuior ingeniis et ad horrida promptior arma (Met. 1.125–6), and specifically to the Aeneid in arma uirumque (Tr. 2.533–4); on Ovid's generic play with Virgilian arma, see Hinds, S., ‘ Arma in Ovid's Fasti—Part 1: genre and mannerism’, Arethusa 25 (1992), 81–112 Google Scholar, at 102–11; see also J.C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores. Volume II. A Commentary on Book One (Liverpool, 1989), 11–12. Statius' arma nocentia (Silv. 1.5.8) refers to his own Thebaid, while arma maiora (Silv. 4.4.95–6) refers to an epic he should be writing about the emperor. In Silius' opening ordior arma (1.1), ordior signals the annalistic past of Ennius and arma refers to Virgil; on Silius and Virgilian arma see Bassett, E.L., ‘Silius Punica 6.1–53’, CPh 54 (1959), 10–34 Google Scholar, at 13.
3 Panegyricus de Quarto Consulatu Honorii Augusti 214–418. On the didactic models for this speech, see C. Ware, ‘Learning from Pliny: Claudian's advice to the emperor Honorius’, in B.J. Gibson and R. Rees (edd.), Pliny the Younger in Late Antiquity (Arethusa 46.2) (Baltimore, 2013), 313–31.
4 The speech is delivered after Honorius' elevation to Augustus in a.d. 393. Honorius was born in a.d. 384. For the context of the speech, see A. Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), 95–6.
5 On the serious import of this theme, see C. Ware, Claudian and the Roman Epic Tradition (Cambridge, 2012), 93–4.
6 Servius notes the grim humour: sarcasmos est, iocus cum amaritudine. These lines were the source of Tiberius' joke at Suet. Tib. 57.2 and Dio Cassius 57.14.2. See Power, T., ‘Pyrrhus and Priam in Suetonius' Tiberius ’, CQ 62 (2012), 430–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, following Turner, A., ‘A Vergilian anecdote in Suetonius and Dio’, CPh 38 (1943), 261 Google Scholar.