Positive Pride in Post-Augustan Literature

This chapter examines the consequences of Augustan experiments for the discourse of pride as a whole. Where one might have expected a coherent strand of positive pride to have emerged, this turns out not to be the case: the presence of positive pride in later Latin literature is minor, intermittent, and fragmented. The chapter analyzes the identifiable examples of positive pride in four groups, which differ in their organization: the continued expression of poetic pride; its eventual, if qualified extension into public contexts; and two related, but distinct strands that show weaker, less emphatic positive or neutral meanings, as a trope of a place proud of its product (or parent proud of a child) and as a generic epithet in Flavian epic, signifying nobility, luxury, and vague generalized greatness.

Sappho, Corinna and Colleagues in Ancient Rome. Tatian’s Catalogue of Statues (Oratio ad Graecos 33-4) Reconsidered

In his Oratio ad Graecos Tatian claims to have seen Sappho’s statue among a number of other female figures in Rome, which, according to a passage in Pliny the Elder, seem to have been in the Portico of Pompey. This article examines how difficulties in the scholarly reception of Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos continue to obstruct a fuller picture of the role of female figures such as Sappho in late Republican and Augustan Rome. Furthermore, by bringing fresh archaeological evidence into the discussion of Tatian’s text and pointing out previously ignored philological connections between Oratio ad Graecos and late Republican and Augustan literature, the article refines the image of a woman like Sappho in Ancient Rome.