Author: JvW

Giannotti Reviews Mascoli

In BSL 51,2, July-December 2021, pp. 719-21, Filomena Giannotti reviews Patrizia Mascoli’s recent Italian translation of Sidonius’ correspondence:

  • ‘Patrizia Mascoli … corona … una militanza più che ventennale su questo significativo letterato’
  • ‘uno strumento di sicura utilità’
  • ‘in un sottile ed equilibrato processo di mediazione fra il riprodurre quanto possibile della tessitura di partenza, e mantenere … una lingua d’arrivo sufficientemente lineare, la sua prima traduzione italiana integrale di Sidonio consegue il risultato di rendere finalmente leggibile … uno degli autori più lambiccati e complessi della letteratura latina.’

The same issue of BSL also contains an account of the Siena conference Metamorfosi del classico in età romanobarbarica (pp. 632-7).

Bari-Durham Writing Letters

On 25 and 26 November, an international colloquium will be held of early career researchers in ancient epistolography, organised by the Universities of Bari and Durham: ‘Writing Letters in the Ancient World: Fictional and Real Letters from the First Century BC to the Fifth Century AD’.

Keynote speakers: Roy Gibson and Ruth Morello.

Giulia Marolla is to speak on ‘Sidonius, Letters Book 5: Between Literary Fiction and Autobiography’.

Organising committee: Laura Losito, Giulia Marolla and Enrico Simonetti.

Download programme here. If you wish to attend, please contact Laura Losito (Durham).

Liccardo on the Heruli

Salvatore Liccardo made a blogpost ‘Identical Strangers: The History of the Heruli Between the 3rd and the 5th Century’, ÖAW 12 October 2021. It is part of the project Visualizing Semantic Landscapes in Early Medieval Europe (MMP), coordinated by Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser.

To the passage mentioned by the author (Carm. 34.31 in Ep. 8.9.6 to Lampridius: hic glaucis Herulus genis vagatur) one can add Carm. 7.235-6 vincitur illic / cursu Herulus, Chunus iaculis Francusque natatu.

Sagittarius or Syagrius in Ep. 2.4?

Gavin Kelly published a blogpost titled ‘A textual and onomastic problem in Sidonius’:

In modern editions, Sidonius’ letter 2.4 is addressed to an otherwise unknown Sagittarius, who is asked to accept the friendship of Sidonius’ protégé Proiectus (also otherwise unknown) as the latter seeks to make an advantageous marriage with a girl of good family for whom Sidonius’ addressee has some sort of role of guardianship following her father’s death. But editions up to that of Lütjohann in 1887 had the letter addressed not Sidonius Sagittario suo salutem but Sidonius Syagrio suo salutem. Syagrius (or to be precise Siagrius) is the reading of the family of manuscripts from which the first edition of 1474 derived. Sagit(t)arius appeared in the majority of the manuscripts picked out by Lütjohann.

How to weigh up the contradictory evidence of the manuscripts?

Read on in Gavin’s blog

Stoehr-Monjou ‘How to Conclude?’

Annick Stoehr-Monjou, ‘How to conclude? A poetics of contrast and paradox in Book 9 and especially in Epist. 9,13-16 by Sidonius Apollinaris’, is a paper given at the International conference and workshop ‘The Stumbling Texts (and Stumbling Readers) of Late Latin Poetry (Lector, quas patieris hic salebras!)’, organised by Markus Kersten, Ann-Kathrin Stähle and Christian Guerra, September 2021, Basel.

Stoehr-Monjou argues that the last four letters of book 9 can be read together as the peroration of his epistolary work, a paradoxical peroration since he writes about poetry.

In HAL Archives (first version).

Harm Pinkster Knighted

Yesterday, 8 October, Harm Pinkster, trailblazer and standard bearer of the Amsterdam school of linguistics, was knighted in the Order of the Netherlands Lion for his exceptional merits for Latin literature and linguistics. He received the award at the hands of the Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam, Simone Kukenheim, during the presentation of the second volume of his magnum opus, the Oxford Latin Syntax.

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