1st Edition
Didactic Literature in the Roman World
Introduction - T. H. M. Gellar-Goad and Christopher B. Polt; Part One - Teaching Philosophies; 1. Lucretius’ DRN and Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus: Comparing and Contrasting Didactic Projects - Michael Paschalis; 2. Epicurean Codas in Vergil’s Georgics - Alison Keith; 3. Fortunatus et ille: Vergil’s Ironic Epicureanism - Peter Heslin; Part Two - Erotodidaxis; 4. Idle Hands: The Poetics of Masturbation in the Winter Scenes of Hesiod (Op. 493–563) and Vergil (G. 1.291–310) - Leah Kronenberg; 5. Animal Love from Vergil: Contesting Marital Propriety in the Age of Augustus - Steven J. Green; 6. The Language of Teaching and Learning in Propertius - Melanie Racette-Campbell; Part Three - Metadidaxis; 7. Buried in Books: Varro’s Papia Papae in the Shade of Scholarship - Joseph McAlhany; 8. Si Est Homo Bulla: Writing between the Lines in Varro’s de Rebus Rusticis - Sarah Stroup; 9. The Shadows of Archimedes: Intertextual Anxieties in Hyginus Gromaticus’ Constitutio Limitum - Del A. Maticic; 10. Satire, Didactic, and New Contexts for Problems in Horace’s Ars Poetica - James J. O’Hara.
Biography
T. H. M. Gellar-Goad is Associate Professor of Classics at Wake Forest University. He specializes in Latin poetry, especially the funny stuff: Roman comedy, Roman erotic elegy, Roman satire, and—if you believe him—the allegedly philosophical poet Lucretius. He is author of Laughing Atoms, Laughing Matter: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Satire (Michigan 2020), Plautus: Curculio (Bloomsbury 2021), and Masks (Tangent 2023).
Christopher B. Polt is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Boston College. His research centers on Latin poetry of the late Republic and early Empire, and he is the author of numerous articles on Roman comedy, ancient epic, and fable. He is the author of Catullus and Roman Comedy: Theatricality and Personal Drama in the Late Republic (Cambridge 2021).
"...the ten chapters that comprise the book are a most valuable contribution to the existing bibliography on the didactic ‘genre’ in Latin literature, as they offer new and insightful readings and perspectives on the texts and themes under discussion... this is a very well-produced book, and scholars of ancient literature, not just Roman, will find very fruitful and useful reading." - The Classical Review
