Project: General Introduction &
KEY to Markers for Intertextual Links [click here]
TABLE OF TRADITIONS, MODES, STYLES, & MOTIFS in EPOS {click here for background discussion}  
Cultural Folds on Achilles' Great  Shield (Iliad 18) city: peace (music) / [war/pastoral w/music destroyed] country: farm work (music, Linos, leptaleen)  country: [pasturing /wild] / dance (music)
Modes in epos  heroic, mythic, civic georgic, didactic bucolic
epic poets, classical Homer, Hesiod [Homeric similes] &Hesiod [Homeric vignettes] &  Hesiod
  "  , hellenistic Apollonius & epyllion: Callimachus, Theocritus Aratus, Nicander, Theocritus Theocritus, Moschus, Bion
  "  , Roman Livius, Naevius, Ennius*, Varro Atacinus & epyllion: Catullus, Cinna, Gallus? Lucilius (satire)*
Lucretius, Varro Atacinus*,
Horace (satire)*		 Virgil, Calpurnius
[cf. lyric & elegy w/shared motifs & topoi]
stylistic levels  high middle low, humble
motif hierarchy  in bucolic 1) cattle 2) sheep 3) goats
Theocritus, Id. 1: personae  at each level in hierarchy Daphnis cowherd Thyrsisshepherd singer 'goatherd' piper
Virgil, B. 1: personae at each level in hierarchy Tityrus boves, tauros Tityrus agnus, ouium fetus Meliboeus capellae
Metonynic links of personae with  modes of epos: loss of conditions for traditional Roman epic Meliboeus: lost civic status & place (patriam fugimus, impius miles, civis miseros) Meliboeus: lost georgic property (arva)
Meliboeus: reduced to lowest layer of bucolic (goats only, exile)
Creating new basis for epic at Rome, grounded in new regieme  Tityrus:  heroic & mythic (Romam, deus) Tityrus:  looks out over vast georgic scene at close (procul villarum, maiores umbrae)  Tityrus: acquires  two layers of bucolic & place (cattle+sheep & rura) 
Modes of epos recapitulated in works of Virgil Aeneid Georgics Bucolics 
CAUTION: In epos, hymns for gods are not long, yet form part of mythic  mode.
Note the special case of the reductions of epos, the so-called epyllion as well as bucolic, which shift focus to marginal characters or intimate experiences.
In this light, consider Catullus 64 (another epyllion), which makes a narrative synthesis from heroic & didactic epic, combining the story of the Argonauts (cf. Apollonius, Ennius) & the Trojan cycle with Hesiod's myth of decline to an iron age. Catullus tells the story as one causal chain of passions stretching from the first sailing through the age of heroes & down to his own degenerate present. Compare Virgil's synthesis of epic modes within the Bucolics.
 
* Satire develops as a Roman variation on epos, shifting not to the pastoral margins but to the ordinary urban & urbane life that is also marginal to heroic epos.
Note how Horace distinguishes his work in satire from other genres 
& from higher modes in epos (synchrony) as well as from earlier satire (diachrony): in his division of epos, the top echelon is reserved for warlike Varius (sc. fiercely leads his verse), the middle, then, for Virgil, to whom the Camenae vouchsafed an epos not forte but 'soft & yet well-versed', followed by satire at the lowest rung.
Horace, Sermones 1.10.31-49
Underlined words &/or themes resonate with the Bucolics
Atque ego cum Graecos facerem, natus mare citra
uersiculos, uetuit me tali uoce Quirinus,
post mediam noctem uisus, cum somnia uera:
'in siluam non ligna feras insanius ac si
magnas Graecorum malis implere cateruas.'
Turgidus Alpinus iugulat dum Memnona dumque
diffindit Rheni luteum caput, haec ego ludo,
quae nec in aede sonent certantia iudice Tarpa
ned redeant iterum atque iterum spectanda theatris.
arguta meretrice potes Dauoque Chremeta
eludente senem comis garrire libellos
unus uiuorum, Fundani; Pollio regum
facta canit pede ter percusso; forte epos acer 
ut nemo Varius ducit, molle atque facetum
Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camenae;
hoc erat experto frustra Varrone Atacino
atque quibusdam aliis melius quod scribere possem,
inuentore minor; neque ego illi detrahere ausim
haerentem capiti cum multa laude coronam.		 31
 

35
 
 
 

40
 
 

45
 
 
 
 
 

 

 REXT: other stories of  authoritative voices used to define programs  in poetics, e.g. Hesiod, Theogony & its reprises in, e.g., Theocritus, Idyll 7, Callimachus, Aitia, 
which Virgil adapts respectively for his initial program (Id. 7 > ambitious journey of Tityrus to Rome, B. 1) & his revisionary modulation (Aitia > repression of Tityrus' ambition, B. 6). 
REXT:. metonymy identifying genre with subject, e.g. writer of heroic or historical epos said to 'strangle' his subject or 'fiercely lead' his verse. 
Back to Home