Dracontius’ Orestes

142 Pages·2022·1.446 MB·English

by  Paul Roche

DRACONTIUS’ ORESTES
This is the first English translation of Dracontius’ Orestes, a Latin poem
from Vandal North Africa that tells the mythic story of the cycle of murder
and vengeance suffered by the family of Agamemnon.
This book provides the reader with a highly accurate and readable
English translation of the Orestes, which is accessible for both scholarly and
non-scholarly readers; it is accompanied by a full introduction and notes.
The introduction discusses the literary, educational and rhetorical culture of
Vandal North Africa, as well as the most important literary aspects of the
Orestes including its major themes, the main literary influences upon it and
its structure and style. Roche also includes a biography of Dracontius and
examines the Orestes’ relationship to his other poetry, to his Christianity
and to the Vandals. The notes explain all important allusions to earlier
literature, they highlight themes and issues raised by each section of the
poem, and they provide a comprehensive overview of each section of the
work so that all readers can understand and appreciate the Orestes against
the backdrop of ancient and late-antique literature.
Dracontius’ Orestes is of interest to students and scholars of ancient
literature, especially the Latin poetry of late antiquity, ancient epics, the
reception of tragedy and comparative literature. It is also suitable for
scholars of late antiquity and the general reader interested in the ancient
world more broadly.
Paul Roche is Associate Professor in Latin at the University of Sydney. He
has published editions of Lucan, De Bello Civili Book I (Oxford 2009) and
Book VII (Cambridge 2019), and he has edited books on Lucan, Pliny the
Younger and politics in Latin literature.
ROUTLEDGE LATER LATIN POETRY
Edited by Joseph Pucci
Brown University, USA
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works of those poets writing in Latin between the fourth and the eighth cen-
turies inclusive. It responds to the increasing interest in later Latin authors
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tory of the same). This section concludes, as need be, with maps and a list
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Volumes hew, as much as possible, to line-for-line versions of the Latin
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THE COMPLETE WORKS OF CLAUDIAN
Translated with an Introduction and Notes
Neil W. Bernstein
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DRACONTIUS’ ORESTES
Paul Roche
Cover image: Orestes Pursued by the Furies by William-Adolphe
Bouguereau (1825–1905), oil on canvas, 1862. IanDagnall
Computing/Alamy Stock Photo
First published 2023
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© 2023 Paul Roche
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-13126-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-13127-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22778-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227786
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
Preface and acknowledgements vi
1 Introduction 1
2 Dracontius, Orestes 41
3 Notes 71
Appendix: textual variations 120
Bibliography 123
Index 129
v
PREFACE AND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dracontius’ Orestes is a short-scale epic poem of just under a thousand hex-
ameter lines, written in Vandal North Africa towards the end of the fifth or
at the start of the sixth century CE. It constitutes antiquity’s final retelling of
one of its earliest and most powerful mythic narratives, that of the cycle of
murder and vengeance suffered by the family of Agamemnon. It is the long-
est, most complex and most ambitious of Dracontius’ mythological narra-
tives, rivalled in his oeuvre only by his three-book epic on Christian faith,
De Laudibus Dei. The Orestes shows a deep consciousness of earlier retell-
ings of its plot going back over nearly a thousand years to Aeschylus’ Orest-
eia, but at the same time, its status as a cultural product of late antiquity is
thoroughly reflected in its narrative style, structure and ethos. The Orestes is
thus an important poem from a major centre of power in the fifth and sixth
century: it marks a significant moment in the reception of classical myth and
literature in late antiquity; it is an original, compelling narrative in its own
right; it reflects many of the tastes and concerns of the era and culture that
produced it; and it has an unusual and fascinating critical history. However,
it has never been translated into English, or verse in any modern language.
This is why I am delighted that this new edition of the poem is appearing in
the Routledge Later Latin Poetry series, which continues to make important
poetic works from late antiquity available to a wider audience in excellent
and accessible editions.
It is a pleasure to express my gratitude for the help and support I have
had in the writing of this edition. I am very grateful to the series editor,
Joseph Pucci, for his warm reception of the idea of an edition of the Orestes
and for his encouragement and support for this project from beginning to
end. The series’ readers, Maria Jennifer Falcone, Angelo Luceri and Aaron
Pelttari, gave excellent and generous feedback at an early stage of the pro-
ject that was both much valued and very encouraging. Bob Cowan read an
early draft of the translation and notes and offered many comments that
vi
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
improved and corrected both of these; Bob also discussed with me several
problems relating to ancient literary culture. Caillan Davenport provided
much needed advice on nomenclature in late antiquity. Michael Hanaghan
read a late draft of the whole book and offered many insightful sugges-
tions. Michael prompted me to think and rethink choices in the translation
from start to finish; I’m grateful to him for his time and care. Anne Roger-
son read the introduction and gave excellent feedback which improved and
clarified it. Finally, I would like to thank Lizzi Risch and Marcia Adams
at Routledge for their advice on the manuscript, and for their support for
this book. Research for this book was supported by the Australian Govern-
ment through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project funding
scheme (project DP220100395).
vii

1
INTRODUCTION
The poet and his works
We know very little about the life of Dracontius. Our information about
him derives from two sources: (i) a subscription of 24 words appended to
one of his poems in the Codex Neapolitanus, a manuscript dated to the late
fifteenth or early sixteenth century; and (ii) snippets of biographical infor-
mation from his works.1 This subscription tells us that his full name was
Blossius Aemilius Dracontius, and that he was a uir clarissimus, a man of
senatorial rank; this status was hereditary and so may have been inherited
by him rather than attained in his own lifetime. His name is a mix of old
and new elements. ‘Blossius’ was an old Roman family name (held most
famously by the Stoic Gaius Blossius of Cumae, who died in 128 BCE); it
was not a common name in late antiquity, but a number of men called Blos-
sius or ‘Blossus’, including another uir clarissimus, are attested at Furnos
Minus just west of Carthage.2 ‘Aemilius’ was a venerable and very famous
Roman family name. The Aemilii were preeminent in politics from the early
fifth century BCE until they died out under the Julio-Claudian emperors
in the first century CE. It is possible that Dracontius traced this part of his
name to a grant of citizenship made by a member of the Aemilian family
many centuries earlier, at which point his ancestor had taken on the name
‘Aemilius’ in recognition of this gift.3 Another possibility is that a similar-
sounding North African name was replaced by this Roman name at some
point in the family’s history: the name ‘Himilis’, for example, appears to
have been Romanized to ‘Aemilius’ by other North Africans.4 The cog-
nomen ‘Dracontius’ is only shared by three other men, all of whom were
located in North Africa in the fourth century, including a vicar of Africa
from Furnos Minus.5 This form of name, a cognomen based on an everyday
word (‘draco’ means ‘snake’) and the suffix ‘-ius’ (or ‘-ios’ in Greek), had
been very common since the second century CE.6
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227786-1 1