Victoria Rimell | |
---|---|
Academic background | |
Education | King's College, Cambridge King's College, London |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classics |
Sub-discipline | Latin Literature |
Institutions | Roma La Sapienza Warwick University |
Victoria Rimell (born 1974) is a British classicist and Professor of Latin at the University of Warwick. Among her publications are books on Ovid,Martial and Petronius.
Rimell studied Classics at King's College,Cambridge where she received a BA and an MPhil degree. She then moved to King's College,London,graduating with a PhD in 2001. After working at University College,Oxford,and Cambridge University,she took up a position at Sapienza University of Rome in 2004. [1] Since 2016,she has worked at Warwick University as an Associate Professor and,from 2018,as a Professor. [2] She also serves on the council of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. [3] In 2020,she was elected a member of the Academia Europaea. [4]
Gaius Valerius Catullus,called Catullus,was a Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic. His surviving works remain widely read due to their popularity as teaching tools and more personal or sexually explicit themes.
The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets,particularly Catullus,Propertius,Tibullus,and Ovid,adopted the same form in Latin many years later. As with the English heroic couplet,each pair of lines usually makes sense on its own,while forming part of a larger work.
An epigram is a brief,interesting,memorable,sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα. This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia.
Latin literature includes the essays,histories,poems,plays,and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC,when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature would flourish for the next six centuries. The classical era of Latin literature can be roughly divided into the following periods:Early Latin literature,The Golden Age,The Imperial Period and Late Antiquity.
Lupercalia,also known as Lupercal,was a pastoral festival of Ancient Rome observed annually on February 15 to purify the city,promoting health and fertility. Lupercalia was also known as dies Februatus,after the purification instruments called februa,the basis for the month named Februarius.
Polyphemus is the one-eyed giant son of Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek mythology,one of the Cyclopes described in Homer's Odyssey. His name means "abounding in songs and legends","many-voiced" or "very famous". Polyphemus first appeared as a savage man-eating giant in the ninth book of the Odyssey. The satyr play of Euripides is dependent on this episode apart from one detail;Polyphemus is made a pederast in the play. Later Classical writers presented him in their poems as heterosexual and linked his name with the nymph Galatea. Often he was portrayed as unsuccessful in these,and as unaware of his disproportionate size and musical failings. In the work of even later authors,however,he is presented as both a successful lover and skilled musician. From the Renaissance on,art and literature reflect all of these interpretations of the giant.
Publius Ovidius Naso,known in English as Ovid,was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace,with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime,the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis,the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia,on the Black Sea,where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake",but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Callimachus was an ancient Greek poet,scholar and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period,he wrote over 800 literary works,most of which do not survive,in a wide variety of genres. He espoused an aesthetic philosophy,known as Callimacheanism,which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and,through them,on all subsequent Western literature.
Marcus Valerius Martialis was a Roman poet born in Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams,published in Rome between AD 86 and 103,during the reigns of the emperors Domitian,Nerva and Trajan. In these poems he satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances,and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote a total of 1,561 epigrams,of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets.
Catullus 3 is a poem by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus that laments the death of a pet sparrow (passer) for which an unnamed girl (puella),possibly Catullus' lover Lesbia,had an affection. Written in hendecasyllabic meter,it is considered to be one of the most famous of Latin poems.
Amores is Ovid's first completed book of poetry,written in elegiac couplets. It was first published in 16 BC in five books,but Ovid,by his own account,later edited it down into the three-book edition that survives today. The book follows the popular model of the erotic elegy,as made famous by figures such as Tibullus or Propertius,but is often subversive and humorous with these tropes,exaggerating common motifs and devices to the point of absurdity.
Anactoria is a woman mentioned by the Ancient Greek poet Sappho,who wrote in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE. Sappho names Anactoria as the object of her desire in a poem known as Fragment 16. Another poem by Sappho,Fragment 31,is traditionally called the "Ode to Anactoria",though no name appears in it. As portrayed in Sappho's work,she is likely to have been a young,aristocratic follower of Sappho's,of marriageable age. It is possible that Fragment 16 was written in connection with her wedding to an unknown man. The name "Anactoria" has also been argued to have been a pseudonym,perhaps of a woman named Anagora from Miletus,or an archetypal creation of Sappho's imagination.
Sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome are indicated by art,literature,and inscriptions,and to a lesser extent by archaeological remains such as erotic artifacts and architecture. It has sometimes been assumed that "unlimited sexual license" was characteristic of ancient Rome,but sexuality was not excluded as a concern of the mos maiorum,the traditional social norms that affected public,private,and military life. Pudor,"shame,modesty",was a regulating factor in behavior,as were legal strictures on certain sexual transgressions in both the Republican and Imperial periods. The censors—public officials who determined the social rank of individuals—had the power to remove citizens from the senatorial or equestrian order for sexual misconduct,and on occasion did so. The mid-20th-century sexuality theorist Michel Foucault regarded sex throughout the Greco-Roman world as governed by restraint and the art of managing sexual pleasure.
Homosexuality in ancient Rome often differs markedly from the contemporary West. Latin lacks words that would precisely translate "homosexual" and "heterosexual". The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality was active / dominant / masculine and passive / submissive / feminine. Roman society was patriarchal,and the freeborn male citizen possessed political liberty (libertas) and the right to rule both himself and his household (familia). "Virtue" (virtus) was seen as an active quality through which a man (vir) defined himself. The conquest mentality and "cult of virility" shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves and former slaves,prostitutes,and entertainers,whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia,so they were excluded from the normal protections accorded to a citizen even if they were technically free. Freeborn male minors were off limits at certain periods in Rome.
Kathleen M. Coleman is an academic and writer who is the James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. Her research interests include Latin literature,history and culture in the early Roman Empire,and arena spectacles. Her expertise in the latter area led to her appointment as Chief Academic Consultant for the 2000 film Gladiator.
In classical mythology,Cupid is the god of desire,erotic love,attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the god of war Mars. He is also known as Amor. His Greek counterpart is Eros. Although Eros is generally portrayed as a slender winged youth in Classical Greek art,during the Hellenistic period,he was increasingly portrayed as a chubby boy. During this time,his iconography acquired the bow and arrow that represent his source of power:a person,or even a deity,who is shot by Cupid's arrow is filled with uncontrollable desire. In myths,Cupid is a minor character who serves mostly to set the plot in motion. He is a main character only in the tale of Cupid and Psyche,when wounded by his own weapons,he experiences the ordeal of love. Although other extended stories are not told about him,his tradition is rich in poetic themes and visual scenarios,such as "Love conquers all" and the retaliatory punishment or torture of Cupid.
Philip Russell Hardie,FBA is a specialist in Latin literature at the University of Cambridge. He has written especially on Virgil,Ovid,and Lucretius,and on the influence of these writers on the literature,art,and ideology of later centuries.
Jennifer Ingleheart is a British classical scholar,who is known for her work on Ovid,Classical reception,and the influence of Rome on the modern understanding of homosexuality. She is Professor of Latin at the University of Durham.
Helen V. Lovatt is Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham. She is known in particular for her work on Latin epic literature especially from the Flavian period.
Nandini Pandey is Associate Professor of Classics at the Johns Hopkins University,after teaching from 2014-2021 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is an expert on the literature,culture,history,and reception of early imperial Rome.