How did Romans read literature from their past? How did they respond to texts whose values challenged or conflicted with their own? This lecture will look at the reception of the poet Virgil some three hundred years after his death, in the period of Late Antiquity. It will survey the various responses to Virgil’s work in the period, from polemic Christian treatises to panegyric praise poetry, before zooming in on one particular text, the Saturnalia of Macrobius. The Saturnalia, I argue, deliberately cuts across the divide between so-called Christian and pagan ways of interpreting Virgil, offering a new image of Virgil’s poems and their values for a cross-cultural late antique audience.

Monday, November 4, 2024 – 4:30pm

Olmsted Room, Mandelle Hall