This collection of essays reaffirms the central importance of adopting an intertextual approach to the study of Flavian epic poetry and shows, despite all that has been achieved, just how much still remains to be done on the topic. Most of the contributions are written by scholars who have already made major contributions to the field, and taken together they offer a set of state of the art contributions on individual topics, a general survey of trends in recent scholarship, and a vision of at least some of the paths work is likely to follow in the years ahead. In addition, there is a particular focus on recent developments in digital search techniques and the influence they are likely to have on all future work in the study of the fundamentally intertextual nature of Latin poetry and on the writing of literary history more generally.

The region of Campania with its fertility and volcanic landscape exercised great influence over the Roman cultural imagination. A hub of activity outside the city of Rome, the Bay of Naples was a place of otium, leisure and quiet, repose and literary productivity, and yet also a place of danger: the looming Vesuvius inspired both fear and awe in the region's inhabitants, while the Phlegraean Fields evoked the story of the gigantomachy and sulphurous lakes invited entry to the Underworld. For Flavian writers in particular, Campania became a locus for literary activity and geographical disaster when in 79 CE, the eruption of the volcano annihilated a great expanse of the region, burying under a mass of ash and lava the surrounding cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. In the aftermath of such tragedy the writers examined in this volume - Martial, Silius Italicus, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus - continued to live, work, and write about Campania, which emerges from their work as an alluring region held in the balance of luxury and peril.

This volume on the three Flavian epic poets (Valerius Flaccus, Statius and Silius Italicus) for the first time critically engages with a unique set-up in Roman literary history: the survival of four epic poems from the same period (Argonautica; Thebaid, Achilleid; Punica). The interactions of these poems with each other and their contemporary context are explored by over 20 experts and emerging scholars. Topics studied include the political dimension of the epics, their use of epic themes and techniques and their intertextual relationship among each other and to predecessors. The recent upsurge of interest in Flavian epic has been focussed on the analysis of individual works. Looking at these poems together now allows the appreciation of their similarities and nuanced differences in the light of their shared position in literary and political history and gives insights into the literary culture of the period. The different approaches and backgrounds of the contributors ensure the presentation of a range of viewpoints. Together they offer new perspectives to the still increasing readership of Flavian epic poetry but also to anyone interested in the epic genre within Roman literature or other cultures more generally.

This collection of papers responds to the question of whether a ritual at the end of a text can offer resolution and order or rather a complicated kind of closure. It reveals that ritual can bring but also can thwart closure by alluding to new beginnings. A ritual could be a perfect kind of ending but it hardly ever seems to be. In Flavian literature this is even more apparent because of the complicated political background under which these texts were produced. Ancient religious practices in the closing sections of Flavian texts help us create connections between endings and (new) beginnings, order and disorder, binding and loosening, structure and dissolution which reflects the structure of the Empire in Flavian Rome. Overall, this volume offers a new tool for studying literary endings through ritual, which promotes our understanding of Flavian culture and politics as well as creating a new perception of the use of religion and ritual in Flavian literature: instead of giving a sense of closure, this volume argues that ritual is a medium to increase complexity, to expose ritual actors and to project a generic riskiness of ritual actors also onto the epic actors who are acting before and mostly after a ritual scene.

The epics of the three Flavian poets--Silius Italicus, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus--have, in recent times, attracted the attention of scholars, who have re-evaluated the particular merits of Flavian poetry as far more than imitation of the traditional norms and patterns. Drawn from sixty years of scholarship, this edited collection is the first volume to collate the most influential modern academic writings on Flavian epic poetry, revised and updated to provide both scholars and students alike with a broad yet comprehensive overview of the field. A wide range of topics receive coverage, and analysis and interpretation of individual poems are integrated throughout. The plurality of the critical voices included in the volume presents a much-needed variety of approaches, which are used to tackle questions of intertextuality, gender, poetics, and the social and political context of the period. In doing so, the volume demonstrates that by engaging in a complex and challenging intertextual dialogue with their literary predecessors, the innovative epics of the Flavian poets respond to contemporary needs, expressing overt praise, or covert anxiety, towards imperial rule and the empire.

This is the first in-depth exploration of the extent and significance of Ovidian intertexts in Statius' Thebaid, with particular emphasis on the interplay between poetics, politics, and material culture. Introducing New Historicist, Cultural Materialistic, and Intermedial approaches to Latin literature, it suggests that, despite their Virgilian patina, Statius' depictions of landscapes, heroes, and gods are pervaded by verbal and semantic allusions to Ovid's mythical narratives. This multi-layered allusivity not only prompts alternative readings of the Augustan classics, but also challenges the reader's perceptions of the Augustanising worldview that the urban landscape of Flavian Rome was arguably meant to convey. The poetic and political significance of Statius' Theban saga thereby moves from critically rewriting the Aeneid to reflecting on the new socio-political issues of Flavian Rome. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

This is the first book-length study of the reception of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica in the epic poems of Silius Italicus (Punica), Statius (Thebaid, Achilleid), and Claudian (De Raptu Proserpinae). It sheds new light on the importance of Valerius' poem and enhances our understanding of the intertextual richness of imperial Latin epic. The readings offered in this book provide new evidence to support the view that Valerius' Argonautica predates the Punica and Thebaid, thus helping to clarify the literary history of the Flavian period (69-96 CE). Stover shows how Silius, Statius, and Claudian use programmatic allusion to the Argonautica to present themselves as Valerius' epic successors. Silius, Statius, and Claudian rework Valerian material to achieve various effects; analysis of these effects is organized by the primary function of allusive interactions, such as 'reversal', 'enrichment', and 'contrast'. This study is essential for scholars of Latin epic poetry. Yet the Greek and Latin of its close readings are translated, making it accessible to all readers interested in intertextuality, comparative literature, and other related topics.

The Dark Side of Statius' Achilleid explores systematically and for the first time the darker aspects of Statius' Achilleid, bringing to light the poem's tragic and epic dimensions. By seeking to position at centre-stage these darker elements, the book offers several new readings of the Achilleid in relation to its literary inheritance, its gender dynamics, and its generic tensions. This volume delves beneath the surface of a story that ostensibly deals with a light subject matter—the cross-dressing of a young Achilles on Scyros—to offer an in-depth examination of the poem's relationship to its epic and tragic precursors, and to explore its more serious themes. It is shown to challenge traditional epic narratives, examine Achilles' complex familial relationships and his deviant and transgressive heroism, highlight the tragic character of Thetis, and provide glimpses of the horrors that the cataclysmic Trojan War will beget. By looking into Statius' wide-ranging dialogue with his literary predecessors, such as Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Seneca, as well as Statius' previous epic magnum opus, the Thebaid, the multidimensional characterisations of Achilles and other of the poem's key characters, such as Ulysses, Calchas, and Thetis are investigated. Far from simply representing a shameful but essentially humorous cross-dressing episode in Achilles' life that is destined to be forgotten, the Achilleid can be seen to challenge the very fabric of epic by probing the validity and authority of its literary tradition, as well as highlighting its highly innovative and experimental nature.

Flavian Poetry and its Greek Past breaks new ground by investigating the close interaction between Flavian poetry and Greek literary tradition and by evaluating the meaning of this affiliation in the socio-political and cultural context of the late first century CE. Authors examined include Martial, Silius Italicus, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus. Their interaction with Greek literature is not just thematic or geographical: the Greek literary past is conceived as the poetic influence of a variety of authors, periods, and genres, such as Homer, the Cyclic tradition, Greek lyric poetry, Greek tragedy, Hellenistic poetry and aesthetics, and Greek historiography.

In the Argonautica, Valerius Flaccus not only recounts a voyage, that of the Argonauts in their quest for the golden fleece, but takes a journey himself, a poetic one, during which he explores new, unconventional paths in the epic genre. The present volume examines this aspect of Valerius’ poetic program, locating its primary source of inspiration in the works of Ovid, especially his epic, the Metamorphoses, and his exile poetry. It argues that the Metamorphoses influences not only discrete – often digressive – episodes in the Argonautica, but Valerius’ view of his poem as a “secondary” form of epic, which broadly deviates from the generic norms of his day. Echoes of the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto complement this approach by identifying many of Valerius’ characters, who are similarly displaced to the edges of the civilized world, with the exiled Ovid and even Valerius himself, who, at the end of the epic, finds his own “ship”, the epic itself, stranded roughly where Ovid lived out his days in exile. From this study, readers will gain a greater appreciation for the importance of Ovid to Valerius’ conception and execution of his epic program and one of its central themes, the journey.