Read more
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.
List of contents
- Frontmatter
- List of Maps
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- 1: Antony Augoustakis and R. Joy Littlewood: Campania in the Flavian Poets' Imagination
- Campania and its Sites
- 2: Claudio Buongiovanni: Literary Representations of Naples in Flavian Poetry
- 3: Lauren Donovan Ginsberg: A Tale of Two Waters: Agrippina's Death in Flavian Poetry
- 4: Darcy Krasne: The Fires of Campania: Typhoeus and the Bay of Naples in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica
- 5: Nikoletta Manioti: The Other Campanian Volcano: Inarime in Flavian Epic
- 6: Étienne Wolff: Martial and Campania
- 7: Margot Neger: Laudabo digne non satis tamen Baias: Martial's Epigrammatic Campania
- Statius' Silvae
- 8: Paolo Esposito: Campanian Geography in Statius' Silvae
- 9: Gianpiero Rosati: Laudes Campaniae: Myth and Fantasies of Power in Statius' Silvae
- 10: Federica Bessone: Quam Romanus honos et Graia licentia miscent: Cultural Fusion, Ethical Temper, and Poetic Blend in Statius' Ideal Campania
- 11: Ana Lóio: Through the Past to the Future of Naples: Text and History in Silvae 4.8
- 12: Arianna Sacerdoti: Semirutos . . . de pulvere vultus: Vesuvius, Statius, and Trauma
- Silius Italicus' Punica
- 13: Marco Fucecchi: Campania and the Punica
- 14: Thomas Biggs: Campania at War
- 15: Alison Keith: Silius' Cumae and its Augustan Predecessors
- 16: Claire Stocks: In a Land of Gods and Monsters: Silius Italicus' Capua
- 17: Elina Pyy and Michiel van der Keur: The Many Faces of Capua: Its Narrative and Programmatic Roles in Punica 11-13
- Epilogue
- 18: Ian Fielding: Statius and his Renaissance Readers: The Rediscovery of a poeta Neapolitanus
- Endmatter
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
About the author
Antony Augoustakis is Professor and Head of Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Statius, Thebaid 8 (Oxford, 2016), Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic (Oxford, 2010), and Plautus' Mercator (Bryn Mawr, 2009), and has also edited and co-edited several volumes on Flavian epic, Roman comedy, and late antiquity. He is currently completing a commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 3 with R. Joy Littlewood and serves as editor of The Classical Journal.
R. Joy Littlewood is an independent scholar based in Oxford. She has published commentaries on Ovid's Fasti 6 (Oxford, 2006), Silius Italicus' Punica 7 (Oxford, 2011), and Silius Italicus' Punica 10 (Oxford, 2017). Her current research projects include the completion of the fourth volume of J. C. McKeown's commentary on Ovid's Amores and a commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 3 with Antony Augoustakis.
Summary
The volcanic soil of Campania, the region surrounding Vesuvius, was fertile ground for the imaginations of Flavian writers. In the aftermath of the volcano's eruption in 79 CE, authors including Martial, Silius Italicus, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus continued to live and work in Campania, writing about it as an alluring region of luxury and peril.
