Latin Poets and Italian Gods / / Elaine Fantham.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Fantham, Elaine,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Robson Classical Lectures
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Based on Elaine Fantham's 2004 Robson lectures, Latin Poets and Italian Gods reconstructs the response of Roman poets in the late republic and Augustan age to the rural cults of central Italy. Study of Roman gods is often limited to the grand equivalents of the Olympian Greek deities such as Jupiter, Mars, and Juno. However, real-life Italians gave a lot of their affection and loyalty to humbler gods with no Greek equivalent: local nymphs who supplied healing waters, the great Tiber river and other lesser rivers, the lusty garden god Priapus, and more.Latin Poets and Italian Gods surveys the representation of these old country gods in poets from Plautus to Statius. Fantham offers historical and epigraphic evidence of worship offered to these colourful lesser spirits and reveals the emotional importance of local Italian deities to the sophisticated poets of the Augustan age.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- PART I. Honouring the Italian Gods -- 1. Rustica Numina: The Country Gods of Italy and Their Reception in Roman Poetry -- 2. Virgil's Gods of the Land -- 3. Ovid's Fasti and the Local Gods of the City -- PART II. Counter-Examples, and the Triumph of Artistry over Fading Devotion -- Introduction to Part II -- 4. Ovidian Variations: From Friendly Flora to Lewd Salmacis and Angry Acheloüs -- 5. Gods in a Man-made Landscape: Priapus -- 6. Gods in Statian Settings -- Notes -- Bibliography -- General Index -- Index of Principal Passages Discussed