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OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS

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The aim of the Oxford Classical Monographs series (which replaces the
Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books based
on the best theses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and ancient
philosophy examined by the Faculty Board of Classics.
Latin Poetry in the

Ancient Greek Novels
DANIEL JOLOWICZ
1
3
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United Kingdom
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Acknowledgements
In writing this monograph, which is a drastically revised, rethought, and expanded

version of an Oxford DPhil thesis submitted in 2015, I have racked up consider-
able debts of gratitude. I would like to register some of these here. I first addressed
the question of imperial Greek engagement with Latin poetry in an MSt disserta-
tion supervised by Steve Heyworth, which then developed into a doctoral thesis
supervised by Tim Whitmarsh (for the first three years) and Steve again (for the
fourth year). Both intellectually and personally, my debt to Tim and Steve is
profound. In converting thesis to book I have benefited immensely from the
unstinting support of Stephen Harrison, who, as book advisor, read the entire
manuscript multiple times and patiently fielded a bewildering array of queries
generated by my fevered brain. Prodigious thanks are further owed to Ewen Bowie
and (again) Tim Whitmarsh, who likewise read the entire manuscript and made
me think harder about points of detail as well as the bigger picture. My doctoral
examiners, Stephen Harrison and Richard Hunter, as well as the anonymous
reader for the Press, provided stewardship and guidance fundamental to the
transition from the thesis’ bulla to the monograph’s toga uirilis. All of these people
have exhibited a generosity of time and spirit for which I shall be in arrears
indefinitely. Brutally quantitative evidence of their impact on my thinking can be
found in the extent to which they inhabit the pages of the bibliography.
It is also a pleasure to record my sincere gratitude to those whose kindness and
good offices helped shepherd the book to completion, and whose interventions
frequently provided much needed ballast in less predictable waters. The
Introduction has been immeasurably sharpened by the trenchant criticisms of
Owen Hodkinson, Stephen Oakley, Michael Trapp, and Chris Whitton; I owe to
Nick Denyer the term ‘predicative synecdoche’ used in Section 6.5. Individual
queries on a range of matters have been graciously and generously fielded by
Amin Benaissa, Aitor Blanco Pérez, Thomas Coward, Scott DiGiulio, Aneurin
Ellis-Evans, Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Talitha Kearey, Fiachra Mac Góráin,
Hugh Mason, Valeria Pace, Chris Pelling, Susan Stephens, and Nick Zair. I have
profited greatly from those colleagues who, at various times and in various ways,
offered themselves as interlocutors, and without whom the process would have
been far more solitary and far less rewarding: David Butterfield, Gabe Byng,
Nicolò D’Alconzo, Koen De Temmerman, Jaś Elsner, Simon Goldhill, Will
Guast, Larry Kim, Emily Kneebone, Benedek Kruchió, Dawn LaValle Norman,
Anna Lefteratou, Tom Mackenzie, John Morgan, Ben Raynor, Ian Repath, Joyce
Reynolds, Helena Schmedt, Henry Spelman, Estelle Strazdins, Aldo Tagliabue,
vi 
Brynja Thorgeirsdottir, Stephen Trzaskoma, and Krešimir Vuković. I would also

like to thank Romain Brethes, David Elmer, Richard Hunter, Beatrice Poletti, and
Bruno Rochette for sharing unpublished work with me. It is, finally, a privilege to
acknowledge the teachers that helped get my Greek up and running, Alex Humes
and †Stephen Mann.
I am lucky to have been the recipient of financial and institutional support that
has enabled this project to come to fruition. An AHRC scholarship secured bed
and board at Magdalen College, Oxford, for the first three years of doctoral study,
and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, offered me employment as a stipendiary
lecturer for the fourth. The bulk of the book was written in the environs of Clare
Hall, Cambridge—a genuine locus amoenus—in my capacity as Isaac Newton–
Ann Johnston Research Fellow. I completed the final stages of the book while
employed in teaching capacities by the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge, and by my
current home, King’s College London. I owe a great deal to all of these institutions
(which have kept me in business) and to the vibrant communities of which they
are composed.
My most personal thanks are reserved for those who already know that, without
them, none of this would have happened: for my teammate in life, Elle; for my
mother and father, Corinna and Philip; for my brother, Tommy; and for my
grandparents, †Drosoulla and Tommy, †Grace and †Bobby. It is to this family unit
that I dedicate this book.
D.A.J.
Farnham, July 2020
As this volume was going to press, we celebrated the arrival of Callirhoë. It is

fitting that she crowns the dedication.
D.A.J.
Farnham Common, December 2020
Contents
Note on Editions and Translations ix

Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
0.1 Status Quaestionis and Greek Biculturality 1
0.2 Greek–Latin Bilingualism 15
0.3 Latin Literary Papyri in the Context of Education 16
0.4 Further Evidence for Knowledge of Latin Poetry 18
0.5 Festivals and Libraries 21
0.6 Allusion and Intertextuality 28
0.7 Introductory Conclusions 33
1. Chariton and Latin Elegy I: The Language of Love 35
1.1 Introduction 35
1.2 Totalizing Language: ὅλος and μόνος; totus and solus 36
1.3 Death 39
1.4 Jealousy 47
1.5 Conclusion 60
2. Chariton and Latin Elegy II: Ovidian Letters and Exile 62
2.1 Introduction 62
2.2 Ovid’s Epistolary Heroines 63
2.3 Ovidian Exile 80
2.4 Conclusion 89
3. Chariton and Vergil’s Aeneid 91
3.1 Introduction 91
3.2 Dreams 93
3.3 Callirhoe the uniuira 98
3.4 The Role of Children 104
3.5 Funerals and Replicas 107
3.6 Chaereas’ Attempted Suicide 114
3.7 Chariton and Aeneid 4: an Addendum 118
3.8 Conclusion 119
4. Achilles Tatius and Latin Elegy 121
4.1 Introduction 121
4.2 Clitophon, contemptor amoris 128
4.3 Clinias, praeceptor amoris 130
4.4 Clinias’ Erotodidactic Authority 137
viii 
4.5 The Ethics of Consent 145

4.6 Satyrus, praeceptor amoris 149
4.7 Satyrus and the Metaphor of seruitium amoris 153
4.8 Erotic Symposia 159
4.9 The Eroticization of Female Fears and Tears 163
4.10 Erotic Theft 172
4.11 Clitophon’s Impotence and Ovid, Amores 3.7 180
4.12 Conclusion 187
5. Achilles Tatius and Vergil’s Aeneid 188
5.2 Melite and Clitophon as Dido and Aeneas 191
5.3 Leucippe’s Flush and Lavinia’s Blush 202
5.4 Vergilian Phraseology 211
5.5 Conclusion 220
6. Achilles Tatius and the Destruction of Bodies: Ovid, Lucan, Seneca 221
6.2 The Death of Charicles: Hippolytus in Euripides, Ovid,
and Seneca 223
6.3 Bodily Reconstitution 235
6.4 The Decapitations of ‘Leucippe’ and Pompey 241
6.5 Ovidian Phraseology 248
6.6 Conclusion 253
7. Longus and Vergil 255
7.2 Pastoral Autonomy and Vergil’s Eclogues 262
7.3 Theft and Vandalism and Vergil’s Eclogues 273
7.4 Theft and Vandalism and Ovidian Elegy 278
7.5 Philetas’ Biography and the Vergilian Career 280
7.6 The φηγός and the fagus 291
7.7 Amaryllis, Pastoral Echo, and Longus’ Latin 297
7.8 Tityros and the Succession of the Pipes 305
7.9 The Methymnaean Invasion (2.12–3.2) and Vergil, Aeneid 7 310
7.10 Conclusion 324
Conclusion 326
Works Cited 331

Index Locorum 377
General Index 394
Note on Editions and Translations
Extended Latin quotations are taken from the Oxford Classical Text where pos-
sible: R. A. B. Mynors 1969 for Vergil; S. J. Heyworth 2007 for Propertius;
J. P. Postgate 1915² for Tibullus; E. J. Kenney 1995 for Ovid’s Amores and Ars;
R. J. Tarrant 2004 for Ovid’s Metamorphoses. For Ovid’s Heroides I use the Loeb
edition of G. Showerman 1914 (revised by G. P. Goold 1977), and for Ovid’s
Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto I use the Loeb edition of A. L. Wheeler 1924
(revised by G. P. Goold 1996). The editions of the Greek novels are as follows:
B. P. Reardon’s 2004 Teubner for Chariton; J.-P. Garnaud’s 1991 Budé for Achilles
Tatius; M. D. Reeve’s 1982 Teubner for Longus.
Translation of Latin texts frequently takes the Loeb editions as a starting point,
which are subjected to adaptation. Translation of the Greek novels takes the
following as a guide (again, with adaptations): G. P. Goold’s 1995 Loeb for
Chariton; T. Whitmarsh’s 2001 Oxford World Classics translation of Achilles
Tatius; J. R. Morgan’s 2004 Aris & Phillips edition for Longus. All translations,
however, reflect the sense of the Latin and Greek as I see it.
Abbreviations
Names of ancient authors and titles are abbreviated according to conventions in the Oxford
Classical Dictionary, 4th edn (OCD⁴). Epigraphic corpora are cited according to conven-
tions in OCD⁴, Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum, and L’Année épigraphique.
Papyrological corpora are cited according to the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin,
Demotic, and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets (available at http://papyri.info);
I occasionally cite a papyrus by its LDAB number (Leuven Database of Ancient Books;
https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/) if it occurs as part of a run of consecutive numbers, or
if it does not belong to one of the more familiar corpora. Other abbreviations are as follows:
Bernabé P. Bernabé (ed.) (1987) Poetarum epicorum Graecorum testimonia

et fragmenta (Leipzig).
BNP H. Cancik and H. Schneider (eds) Brill’s New Pauly, English
translation edited by C. F. Salazar and F. G. Gentry (Leiden).
Breccia E. Breccia (ed.) (1911) Iscrizioni greche e latine (Cairo).
CE Carmina Epigraphica, final part of Anthologia Latina (1869–1926),
ed. A. Riese, P. Buecheler, and E. Lommatsch (Leipzig).
Chantraine P. Chantraine (1968) Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue
grecque: histoire des mots (Paris).
Cougny E. Cougny (ed.) (1890) Epigrammatum Anthologia Palatina: cum
Planudeis et Appendica Nova, iii (Paris).
Courtney E. Courtney (ed.) (1993) The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford).
Cunningham J. Rusten and I. C. Cunningham (eds) (2003) Theophrastus:
Characters, Herodas: Mimes, Sophron and Other Mime Fragments
(Cambridge, MA).
Davies-Finglass M. Davies and P. Finglass (eds) (2014) Stesichorus: The Poems.
Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary
(Cambridge).
Denniston J. D. Denniston (1954) The Greek Particles, 2nd edn (Oxford).
Diehl E. Diehl (ed.) (1911) Die Vitae vergilianae und ihre antiken Quellen
(Bonn).
Diggle J. Diggle (ed.) (1970) Euripides: Phaethon. Edited with
Prolegomena and Commentary (Cambridge).
DK H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds) (1952) Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,
6th edn (Berlin).
Ernout Meillet A. Ernout and A. Meillet (eds) (2001) Dictionnaire étymologique de
la langue latine: histoire des mots, 4th edn (Paris).
EV F. Della Corte (ed.) (1984–91) Enciclopedia Virgiliana (Rome).
FGrH F. Jacoby et al. (eds) (1923–) Die Fragmente der griechischen
Historiker (Berlin; Leiden).
xii 
Foerster R. Foerster (ed.) (1903–27) Libanius: Opera (Leipzig).

FRH T. J. Cornell et al. (eds) (2013) Fragments of the Roman Historians
(Oxford).
Gow A. S. F. Gow (ed.) (1952) Bucolici graeci (Oxford).
GS A. F. Scholfield and A. S. F. Gow (eds) (1953) Nicander: The Poems
and Poetical Fragments (Cambridge).
Helm R. Helm (ed.) (1913) Die Chronik des Hieronymus = Hieronymi
Chronicon/herausgegeben im Auftrage der Kirchenväter (Leipzig).
Hopkinson N. Hopkinson (ed.) (2015) Theocritus. Moschus. Bion. (Cambridge,
MA).
Hordern J. H. Hordern (ed.) (2002) The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus
(Oxford).
Hosius C. Hosius (ed.) (1913) M. Annaei Lucani Belli civilis libri decem
(Stuttgart).
Hunter R. L. Hunter (ed.) (1983) Eubulus: The Fragments. Edited with a
Commentary (Cambridge).
Jocelyn H. D. Jocelyn (ed.) (1967) The Tragedies of Ennius: The Fragments.
Edited with an Introduction and Commentary (Cambridge).
KA R. Kassel and C. Austin (eds) (1983–) Poetae Comici Graeci
(Berlin; New York).
Keil H. Keil (ed.) (1855–1923; repr. 1961) Grammatici Latini, 8 vols.
Lightfoot J. L. Lightfoot (ed.) (2010) Hellenistic Collection: Philitas.
Alexander of Aetolia. Hermesianax. Euphorion. Parthenius
(Cambridge, MA).
LSJ H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, H. S. Jones, R. McKenzie, P. G. W. Glare,
and A. A. Thompson (eds) (1996) A Greek–English Lexicon, 9th
edn (Oxford).
Maehler H. Maehler (ed.) (2001) Pindarus. Pars II, Fragmenta, indices
(Leipzig).
Merkelbach-Stauber 1 R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber (eds) (1998) Steinepigramme aus dem
griechischen Osten Band 1: die Westküste Kleinasiens von Knidos
bis Ilion (Berlin; New York).
Most G. W. Most (ed.) (2018) Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days,
Testimonia (Cambridge, MA).
Musa Lapidaria E. Courtney (ed.) (1995) Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin
Verse Inscriptions (Atlanta).
MW R. Merkelbach and M. L. West (eds) (1967) Fragmenta Hesiodea
(Oxford).
NH R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard (eds) (1970) A Commentary on
Horace Odes Book I (Oxford).
NR R. G. M. Nisbet and N. Rudd (eds) (2004) A Commentary on
Horace Odes Book III (Oxford).
OLD P. G. W. Glare (ed.) (1968–82) Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford).
Otto A. Otto (1890) Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten
der Römer (Leipzig).
 xiii
Pf. R. Pfeiffer (ed.) (1949) Callimachus: The Works. Vol. 1: Fragments

(Oxford).
Pichon R. Pichon (1902) De sermone amatorio apud Latinos elegiarum
scriptores (Paris).
PIR² E. Klebs and H. Dessau (1897–8) 1st edn / E. Groag, A. Stein et al.
(1933–) 2nd edn, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (Berlin).
PMG D. L. Page (ed.) (1962) Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford).
Powell J. U. Powell (ed.) (1925) Collectanea Alexandrina: reliquiae
minores poetarum Graecorum aetatis Ptolemaicae 324–146 A.C.
(Oxford).
Reed J. D. Reed (ed.) (1997) Bion of Smyrna: The Fragments and the
Adonis (Cambridge).
Ribbeck O. Ribbeck (ed.) (1855) Scenicae romanorum poesis fragmenta
(Leipzig).
Rychlewska L. Rychlewska (ed.) (1971) Turpilii comici fragmenta (Leipzig).
Schierl M. Schierl (ed.) (2006) Die Tragödien des Pacuvius: ein
Kommentar zu den Fragmenten mit Einleitung, Text und
Übersetzung (Berlin).
SH H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons (eds) (1983) Supplementum
Hellenisticum (Berlin; New York).
Sk. O. Skutsch (ed.) (1985) The Annals of Q. Ennius (Oxford).
Smyth H. W. Smyth (1956) Greek Grammar (Boston).
Spanoudakis K. Spanoudakis (ed.) (2002) Philitas of Cos (Leiden).
SSH H. Lloyd-Jones (ed.) (2005) Supplementum Supplementi
Hellenistici (Berlin; New York).
Stronk J. P. Stronk (ed.) (2010) Ctesias’ Persian History (Düsseldorf).
SVF H. von Arnim (ed.) (1905–24) Stoicorum veterum fragmenta
(Leipzig).
SW S. A. Stephens and J. J. Winkler (eds) (1995) Ancient Greek Novels:
The Fragments (Princeton).
TrGF B. Snell, R. Kannicht, and S. Radt (eds) (1971–2004) Tragicorum
Graecorum fragmenta, 6 vols (Göttingen).
V. E.-M. Voigt (ed.) (1971) Sappho et Alcaeus Fragmenta
(Amsterdam).
W. M. L. West (ed.) (1989–92) Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum
cantati, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Oxford).
Warmington E. H. Warmington (ed.) (1935–40) Remains of Old Latin, 4 vols
(Cambridge, MA).
Wendel C. Wendel (ed.) (1914) Scholia in Theocritum vetera (Leipzig).
West M. L. West (ed.) (2003) Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to
the Fifth Centuries BC (Cambridge, MA).
Introduction
0.1 Status Quaestionis and Greek Biculturality
One version of the story begins with a bilingual epitaph from Thyatira in Lydia:
Ξένωνι ἐτ(ῶν) [ . . . ] καὶ Πρείμωι ἐτ(ῶν) ε’ τοῖς τέκνοις

και Οὐαλερίῳ Οὐαλερίου γραμματικῷ Ῥωμαικῷ ἐτ(ῶν) κγ’
uota superuacua fletusque et numina diuum
naturae leges fatorumque arguit ordo
spreuisti patrem matremque miserrime nate
Elysios campos habitans et prata ueatum.
For the children Xenon, [ . . . ] years old, and for Primus, five years old,
and for the Latin teacher Valerius, son of Valerius, twenty-three years old.
The laws of nature and the course of fates prove that wishes, lamenta-
tions, and even heavenly powers are superfluous. Most wretched son,
you have scorned your father and mother, since now you dwell in the
Elysian fields and meadows of the blessed.
Kearsley summarizes this early second-century  text as follows: ‘An epitaph for
two sons who die as children. The third person commemorated, Valerius, was not
related and is designated by his profession. He must have earned his place in the
family tomb as tutor to one or more children in the family.’¹ This is one of
hundreds of bilingual (or ‘mixed language’) inscriptions emanating from
imperial-period Asia Minor,² but it is remarkable for three reasons. First is the
inclusion of a Latin teacher (γραμματικῷ Ῥωμαικῷ) in an epitaph from a Greek-
speaking city in the High Empire—this despite the fact that evidence for any
institutionalized Latin-learning in the Greek east during this period is virtually
non-existent.³ Secondly, the accompaniment of the Greek dedication by a Latin
¹ Kearsley (2001) no. 91. The text is Kearsley’s edition of TAM V, 2.1119 = Merkelbach-Stauber 1
04/05/08 (I retain Merkelbach-Stauber’s arguit in verse 3 for the stone’s arcuit; translation mine).
Further bilingual verse epitaphs from Asia Minor: Kearsley (2001) no. 75 (from Ephesus), 85 (from
Teos). Discussion: Uzunoğlu (2013).
² See Levick (1995); Kearsley (2001); Biville et al. (2008).
³ For Kearsley (2001) 150 this epitaph indicates that knowledge of Latin in some wealthy families
‘could have been acquired systematically’. I thank Bruno Rochette for sharing with me an unpublished
paper that addresses this question.
Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novels. Daniel Jolowicz, Oxford University Press (2021). © Daniel Jolowicz.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192894823.003.0001
2       
hexameter quatrain speaks to an interest in poetic Latin (perhaps by way of

honouring the deceased grammaticus)—an interest for which, again, evidence
from the High Empire is rare. Thirdly, the description of Elysium in the Latin
quatrain shares an appreciable number of linguistic elements with Vergil’s
account of Aeneas’ arrival at Elysium in the Underworld in the Aeneid
(6.637–41).⁴ Latin education, and Latin poetry in particular, thus emerge as
critical for understanding the content and context of this epitaph for Xenon,
Primus, and Valerius.
This book offers an approach to an overarching issue raised by the inscription,
namely the status and function of Latin poetry in the Greek-speaking world
during the first 200 years of Roman rule. My ultimate aim is to achieve a better
understanding of this phenomenon, as a route to which I shall explore one
particular area of literary activity from the period: the Greek novels. Before
tackling the novels themselves, in the Introduction I shall canvass the evidence
for Greek biculturality through the early- and high-imperial periods (that is, the
first and second centuries); this sketch is designed to weaken the prejudices
surrounding the question of Greek awareness of, and engagement with, Latin
literature (poetry in particular). Having set out in the Introduction a number of
contexts in which practitioners of imperial Greek literature may have encountered
Latin poetry, in Chapters 1–7 I shall offer a series of readings of the Greek novels
that establish Latin poetry, especially that from the Augustan to Neronian periods,
as an essential frame of reference.
The book therefore seeks to offer some approaches to, and case studies of, the
status of Latin poetry from the perspective of imperial Greek literary culture. It is
far from exhaustive, and some of my decisions require explanation. First, the
contents and structure of the book, which is organized by individual novelists and
their Latin poetic interests as follows: Chapters 1 and 2 on Chariton’s Chaereas
and Callirhoe and Latin elegy (treating ‘erotic’ elegy, and epistolary and exilic
themes in Ovid, respectively); Chapter 3 on Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe
and Vergil’s Aeneid; Chapter 4 on Achilles Tatius’ Clitophon and Leucippe and
Latin elegy; Chapter 5 on Achilles Tatius’ Clitophon and Leucippe and Vergil’s
Aeneid; Chapter 6 on Achilles Tatius’ obsession with bodily destruction in con-
nection with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile, and Senecan tragedy
(the Phaedra in particular); and Chapter 7 on Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe and the
⁴ Aeneas fulfils the ‘task of the goddess’ (munere diuae, in the same metrical sedes as the epitaph’s
numina diuum) and arrives at Elysium, which is variously described as locos laetos, amoena uirecta,
sedes beatas, and campos (where the epitaph has Elysios campos and prata ueatum [= beatorum: on the
confusion of B and V in imperial-era inscriptions see Adams (2002) 624–66, for which reference
I thank Nick Zair; the archaic genitive plural in -um follows Vergilian practice, e.g. Aen. 6.92, 6.307,
with Horsfall (2006) ad Aen. 3.704]); if Vergil’s Underworld does serve a functional purpose here, the
poet of the Latin quatrain has transformed Vergil’s happy place into a sad place. A γραμματικός might
himself even compose epic poetry, such as Dioscorides of Tarsus, author of an epic poem about
Knossos (IDelos 1512, for which reference I thank Ewen Bowie).
 3
Vergilian oeuvre (especially the Eclogues and Aeneid).⁵ Xenophon of Ephesus’

Ephesiaca does not receive a chapter on the basis that it is not possible, on my
reckoning, to offer a systematic account of how the author engages with any given
aspect or genre of Latin poetry;⁶ likewise the fragmentary novels, which receive
glancing notices.⁷ Heliodorus’ Aethiopica lies outside the scope of this study. This
is not because he has sequestered himself from Latin material,⁸ but because my
stated purpose is to support the claim that there is Greek engagement with Latin
poetry during the first two centuries, that is, the period for which the claim is most
controversial. Heliodorus dates to a later period, either the third or fourth
century,⁹ for which, as the evidence gathered in the Introduction will show, the
claim is far less controversial. After all, as a result of the Constitutio Antoniniana
issued by Caracalla in 212 , every free man in the empire became a Roman
citizen.¹⁰
Secondly, why the Greek novels? These texts offer a useful body of material for
such a project, given that those under discussion all belong, with a reasonable
degree of certainty, to the period christened by modern scholarship as the ‘Second
Sophistic’ (roughly periodized as 50–250 ),¹¹ or at least thereabouts: Chariton in
the first century or early second century; Achilles in the second century; and
Longus in the later second or early third century.¹² Their specific dating and
relative chronology are uncertain, but my general argument does not rely on any
security in this regard. The extent to which the novelists conceptualize themselves
as practitioners of a particular genre (‘the novel’) is also unclear,¹³ a situation
compounded by the fact that there is no obvious sign of the novels having
⁵ See Whitmarsh (2005b) on the titles of the novels, noting, at 596, an analogy with Latin love
elegy.
⁶ Although see pp. 155–8, with n. 187, for some possible instances. See Tagliabue (2017) on
Xenophon’s ‘paraliterary’ status.
⁷ E.g. p. 164 n. 221, on Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca and Ovid; p. 209 n. 87, on Ninus and Vergil; p. 218
on the Herpyllis fragment and Vergil.
⁸ See, e.g., Weinreich (1984) 429–31, comparing Hld. 9.21.1 and Verg. Aen. 6.853 on treatment of
enemies. Salgado (2015) makes the unlikely identification of the novelist Heliodorus with the com-
panion of Horace and learned Greek rhetor, also named Heliodorus, at Hor. Serm. 1.5.2–3.
⁹ See Morgan (1996a) 417–21 on the question of Heliodorus’ date.
¹⁰ On this edict see Imrie (2018).
¹¹ This problematic phrase derives from Philostr. VS 481; see Whitmarsh (2001c) 41–5.
Introductions to the literature and culture of the period include Anderson (1993); Swain (1996);
Goldhill (2001); Whitmarsh (2001c), (2005d); König (2009); Richter and Johnson (2017).
¹² Chariton: Ruiz-Montero (1994) 1008–12; Bowie (2002) 54–8; Tilg (2010) 36–78; Jolowicz
(2018a), (2018c) suggests a Flavian date. Achilles: Whitmarsh (2020) 4–5, favouring a date in the
130s; cf. Henrichs (2011) 303–13 on the basis of P.Oxy. 3836; Chew (2014) 63–5. Longus: Morgan
(2004b) 1–2; Pattoni (2005) 122–4; Bowie (2019b) 19–20; see Section 7.1 below.
¹³ Selden (1994) 43 comments: ‘There is no evidence that before the modern era the range of texts
that we have come to call the “ancient novel” were ever thought of together as constituting a coherent
group’; followed by Whitmarsh (2018a) xv, conceiving less of a ‘genre’ than of ‘an imaginative space
that activates multiple interconnections’. See generally Holzberg (1996) and essays in Karla (2009).
Nevertheless, on the possibilities of intrageneric intertextuality see, e.g., Bird (2018); Whitmarsh
(2018b).
4       
attracted any formalized literary criticism or theory in antiquity;¹⁴ but what is

clear is that the diction, motifs, themes, and plots of each are all homogeneous
enough to allow for them to be approached as a unit, which thus offers the
opportunity for assessing how a given body of Greek prose literature during a
given time period responds to Latin poetry. All this raises the significant question
of whether the novels’ engagement with Latin material makes them a ‘special case’
within the corpus of imperial Greek literature. I defer fuller discussion of this issue
until the Conclusion (at pp. 329–30), but would say here that, if the novels are
indeed ‘different’ in this regard, it is in the scale of their engagement rather than
the fact of their engagement.
Thirdly, why choose to explore prose texts for evidence of engagement with
poetry? And why choose Latin poetry rather than Latin literature at large? Both
questions have to do with sample size and dating. While poetry in Greek was
certainly being composed during the first two centuries (not least in Asia Minor
and Achaia),¹⁵ there is not enough extant material to enable a conclusion one way
or the other. The majority of Greek poetry, especially hexameter—for example
Quintus of Smyrna and Triphiodorus (third century), and Nonnus, Musaeus, and
Colluthus (fifth century)—is from the third century or later, that is, from a period
in which Greek engagement with Latin poetry is a far less controversial propos-
ition than it is for the first two centuries; these authors’ awareness of Latin poetry,
especially Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, has been well canvassed.¹⁶
As to why I have chosen to search for evidence of engagement with Latin poetry
(rather than Latin prose as well), this is, again, partially a pragmatic solution to the
need to circumscribe the amount of material under consideration. More signifi-
cantly, a focus on poetry also enables the conclusion that Greek interest in Latin
literature extends beyond the mere need for historical ‘source’ material available in
prose writers such as Cicero or Livy.
Why is such a book necessary? There is a remarkable lack of ancient testimony
illuminating what Roman-period Greek authors actually thought about Latin
literature.¹⁷ A lone voice stands out, although even this relates to prose rather
¹⁴ See Morgan (1993) on this issue, with p. 31 below on the question of ancient readership.
¹⁵ Bowie (1989) gathers epigraphic and literary evidence.
¹⁶ Quintus of Smyrna: Gärtner (2005); A. James (2007); Hadjittofi (2007) 375–80; Scheijnen (2018)
passim. Triphiodorus: D’Ippolito (1976), (1990); Gärtner (2013) 101–4. Nonnus and Vergil: Cataudella
(1932) 333; D’Ippolito (1991) 527–32. Nonnus and Ovid: Braune (1935); D’Ippolito (2007); Diggle
(1970) 180–200; contra Knox (1988), with further (older) bibliography at 536–7; Paschalis (2014).
Colluthus: Cadau (2015) 72–3, 196–7; Morales (2016) 73, with n. 27. Oppian: Rodríguez Pantoja
(2007). Useful summaries include: Torres Guerra (2012); Gärtner (2013); Miguélez-Cavero (2013)
64–71.
¹⁷ A late instance, from the fifth/sixth century , occurs in an epigram by Christodorus of Coptus,
which refers to a cast of characters from the Aeneid (A.P. 2.144–54, 222–7, 246–50), as well as to Vergil
himself (414–16). Critical evaluation of Vergil in this poem is not unambiguously positive—he is a
‘clear-voiced swan’ (λιγύθροος κύκνος) and a ‘second Homer’ (ἄλλον Ὅμηρον), but also nourished by
‘echo’ (ἠχώ): credit for his (derivative) poetic skill is thus placed squarely at the door of the Greek
tradition.
 5
than to poetry: in the On the Sublime, a text usually attributed to Longinus and
probably composed during the first century ,¹⁸ the author compares the stylistic
virtues of Cicero and Demosthenes—but not before feyly adverting to his self-
consciousness that he, a Greek, should be expressing an opinion on the literary
qualities of a Latin-speaking Roman (12.4–5). Notwithstanding the rhetoric of
cultural differentiation evident in this passage,¹⁹ the impression is nevertheless
one of Greek distance from Roman literature (let alone poetry)—an impression
reinforced, for example, by the second-century orator Aelius Aristides’ complete
silence on the topic of Roman literature in his Roman Oration (Or. 26).²⁰ This
distance is also nominally in line with other arenas of social and cultural life in
which Greeks disavow proximity to the Romans. For example, Plutarch nowhere
alerts us to his Roman citizenship, which we know only by a single inscription
identifying his tria nomina, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (SIG 829a);²¹ indeed, the
Vespasianic philosopher Apollonius of Tyana is reported by Philostratus to have
sent a letter to the Ionians rebuking them for their use of Roman names (VA
4.5).²² Apollonius is likewise critical of the presence of Roman baths and the
practice of gladiatorial shows in the Greek east (VA 4.22, 4.27, 4.42).²³ And as is
evident from Dio, excessive familiarity with (or flattery towards) the Romans,
such as shaving off one’s beard in imitation of them, attracts derision from fellow
Greeks (Or. 36.17).²⁴ In the public environment of the Greek elite, apparently
nothing should interfere with the projection of Greekness.
This overly schematic picture of a culturally ghettoized Graeco-Roman world
has prejudiced scholarship to insist that Greeks of the imperial period were not
much interested in Latin literature. Gibbon famously pronounced the orthodox
position, which still holds reasonably firm: ‘There is not, I believe, from Dionysius
to Libanius, a single Greek critic who mentions Vergil or Horace. They seem
ignorant that the Romans had any good writers.’²⁵ Although generally true, this
lacks nuance: Julius Caesar in Appian (B Ciu. 2.146) quotes the Latin dramatist
Pacuvius (a Greek translation of fr. 31 Schierl), for example. Separated from
Gibbon by over two centuries, Woolf maintains that Greeks ‘remained to the
end resistant to Latin literary culture’, and Swain writes that there is ‘[o]ne thing
¹⁸ On attribution and dating see Russell (1981) 64–6; Whitmarsh (2001c) 57 n. 69, with further
bibliography; Heath (2012).
¹⁹ On which see Whitmarsh (2001c) 68–9.
²⁰ This is in pointed contrast to the same author’s Panathenaic Oration, in which Attic literature is
celebrated as part of the Athenian success story (Or. 1.322–30).
²¹ On Plutarch’s views on Rome see Swain (1996) 135–86; Stadter and Van der Stockt (2002).
Plutarch is, however, explicit about his Roman friends and readership: Stadter (2014).
²² Cf. Bowie (1970) 201 on Greek rejection of Roman place-names, measurements, and dating.
²³ See Carter (2009) on Greek spectators’ attitudes to gladiators.
²⁴ On Dio’s position in relation to Rome see Jones (1978) 124–31; Swain (1996) 187–241;
Whitmarsh (2001c) 133–246.
²⁵ Gibbon (1909) 1.38 n. 43 (italics mine).
6       
we can be sure of: Rome was not a source of inspiration’ for Greeks.²⁶ From the
two strands of explanation represented by these quotations, one positing Greek
ignorance, the other imputing to the Greeks a deliberate intention not to engage,
other scholars tend to agree that ‘silence’ does not equate to ‘ignorance’. Robert
regards it as a function of the paradigm that renders Roman interest in Greece as
‘cultural’ but Greek interest in Rome as ‘utilitarian’.²⁷ On a somewhat different
tack, Grube suggests that Greeks refrain from mentioning Latin literature in order
to save Romans from embarrassment!²⁸ Rochette detects a deliberate disregard
and affected ignorance.²⁹ For Hidber, it is no surprise that Greeks might cover up
their knowledge of Roman literature and language, given their feelings of cultural
superiority and resentment towards their Roman overlords.³⁰ Gärtner reasons
that Latin did not have the cultural capital for the Greeks that Greek had for the
Romans.³¹ Hose dismisses the ‘deliberate disavowal’ or ‘refusal’ argument, and
instead proposes that it is less a cultural reflex than a ‘textual strategy’ that
parallels an apparent avoidance on the part of imperial Greek authors from citing
each other (or, for that matter, any post-classical authors).³² At any rate, a
knowledge of Latin literature (including poetry) has been suggested in piecemeal
fashion for a number of authors and corpora (such as the New Testament,
Plutarch, Lucian, and later Greek epistolography and epigram),³³ and there have
been a number of recent protreptics advocating the need for scholarship to rethink
its prejudices regarding the intertextual practices of authors of Greek literature in
the imperial period.³⁴ Amidst such calls to arms, a book on the subject is timely
and, hopefully, useful.
In order to undermine a prejudice, it is necessary to understand the reasons for
its genesis and perpetuation. The widespread reluctance on the part of scholars to
²⁶ Woolf (1994) 131 (italics mine), also referring, at 129, to ‘the extreme resistance to Latin in this
period’; Swain (1996) 28.
²⁷ F. Robert (1946) 57–9, cited by Rochette (1997) 13. ²⁸ Grube (1965) 213.
²⁹ Rochette (1997) 81–3, 269. Cf. Crook (1961) 69: ‘One of the most obvious peculiarities about the
Greek writers of the Empire is the way in which they ignore Roman literature.’ (Italics mine.)
³⁰ Hidber (2006) 239. ³¹ Gärtner (2013) 94.
³² Hose (2007) 338; cf. Sánchez-Ostiz (2014) 16.
³³ Rochette (1997) is fundamental; Holford-Strevens (1993) is a useful account; cf. also Gudeman
(1890). New Testament: Louden (2018) 196–219, on Vergil and Ovid. Lucian and Juvenal: Helm (1906)
218–22; Mesk (1912), (1913); Courtney (1980) 551–5; Bozia (2014) 16–51. Lucian and Horace: Hall
(1981) 110–21. Plutarch: Zadorojnyi (1997), contra Pelling (1979) 75, despite the paraphrase of Hor.
Epist. 1.6.40–6 at Luc. 39.6, on which see Stadter (2014) 130–48. Plutarch and Cicero/Sallust: Moles
(1988) 28–31; Pelling (1988) 137. Humanist scholars thought Plutarch may have read the Aeneid: La
Cerda (1628) 585 (on Aen. 11.227), for which reference I thank Fiachra Mac Góráin. Cassius Dio and
Vergil/Cicero: Millar (1964) 52–5; Baldwin (1987). Greek epistolography (esp. Alciphron, Philostratus,
Aristaenetus) and Latin elegy/Ovid: Schoess (2018); Hodkinson (forthcoming). Imperial Greek epi-
gram and (mainly) Latin elegy: Schulz-Vanheyden (1969); Williams (1978) 124–38; Nisbet (2003)
145–52; De Stefani (2006); Prioux (2008) 75–8, 99–100, on epigrammatic graffiti in the so-called
Domus Musae in Assisi. Torres Guerra (2012) 440–2 offers exhaustive bibliography on the presence of
Ovid in later Greek poetry.
³⁴ Sánchez-Ostiz (2009), (2010), (2014); Torres Guerra (2012). Olivier Demerre is currently pre-
paring a Ghent PhD thesis on the Greek novels and Latin literature.
 7
believe that the Romans had anything to offer the Greeks in terms of literature is
forgivable given that, as I have suggested above, in the first two centuries there is
simply no testimony as to what Greeks thought about Latin poetry; yet this
reluctance comes dangerously close to implying the existence of an unspoken
agreement amongst imperial-period Greeks, as if at some point in the early first
century  a committee of Greek intellectuals convened to decide that under no
circumstances should they betray an awareness of Latin poetry. Such a formalized
literary policy would, of course, be unlikely. A further explanation can perhaps be
related to scholarship of the nineteenth century, especially that which, fuelled by
nationalist and Eurocentric ideology, sought to argue that Greek culture was
cocooned from external influences.³⁵ This contributed to the ‘belief that Greek
culture was insulated from non-Greek influence’, precipitating the current situ-
ation in which ‘scholars of Greek literature tend to emphasize Greek sources, and
hence tacitly to exclude the possibility of cultural fusion’³⁶—although this default
stance is beginning to change.³⁷ I would, however, emphasize that this particular
strand of sinister intellectual history is to be distinguished from more modern
(and less politically motivated) explanations, the first and most obvious of which
is, as has been stated, the apparent absence of evidence for such engagement,
especially in the first two centuries. This is directly related to a third explanation,
namely that once an orthodoxy ossifies, it influences future criticism and reading
practices: if we are assured that Greeks do not read Latin poetry, then we shall not
look for evidence that they did (or we shall at least be less diligent in our search).
In such a climate, when potential evidence is unearthed, it is usually explained
away as proof of a ‘lost common source’ (see Section 7.1 on Philitas and Longus,
for example).
Another factor informing the prevailing paradigm is the obsession, evident in
imperial Greek literature, with the classical past, a necessary consequence of which
is the relegation of Rome.³⁸ For Schmid, this is expressed in the phenomenon of
Atticism, that is, the inorganic attempt of authors to reproduce the Greek dialect
of the fifth and fourth centuries ;³⁹ this may even have affected day-to-day
pronunciation.⁴⁰ Fuchs, Bowie, and Swain regard it as a broad cultural phenom-
enon in line with the general privileging of the classical past, which they diagnose
as symptomatic of a nostalgic escape fantasy and act of intellectual or cultural
³⁵ E.g. Rohde (1914) on the purely Greek origins of the Greek novel, responding to Huet (1670), who
argues for Egyptian, Arabian, and Persian influence. Whitmarsh (2013d) is a useful discussion of these
issues.
³⁶ Whitmarsh (2010c) 396, discussing the ‘veiled racism’ of Erwin Rohde.
³⁷ See the essays in Whitmarsh and Thomson (2013). On Egyptian and Sumerian influence on the
Greek novels see Barns (1956); Anderson (1984); Rutherford (2000). Most recently, Whitmarsh
(2018a) presents genealogical hybridity as a constitutive feature of the novels.
³⁸ See Forte (1972) on Greek responses to Roman rule from the third century  onwards; Hose
(1999) offers a postcolonial perspective.
³⁹ Schmid (1887–97). ⁴⁰ Vessella (2018); see also Kim (2017), with n. 71 below.
8       
resistance—an attempt on the part of the Greeks to recreate their glorious past in
the face of their own political impotence under Roman rule.⁴¹ Kennedy and
Russell see imperial Greek declamation as servicing a similar ‘escape’ function.⁴²
On this model, the past serves as a discursive structure that provides a way of
coming to terms with (or, given a more aggressive spin, of psychologically
combatting) the realities of Roman rule.⁴³ The twenty-first century has witnessed
an explosion of scholarship on the identity politics of ‘being Greek under Rome’.⁴⁴
Prominent voices are Goldhill and Whitmarsh, the latter of whom argues that
Greek texts from this period are ‘inherently bound up with the process of
negotiation of an identity discrete from Rome’; this is especially the case in their
mimesis of the past and adherence to the canons of paideia, which function as
indices of Greek identity and counterweights to Roman power.⁴⁵ Alcock’s studies
of the devastating effect of Roman imperialism on the Greek landscape (especially
Achaia) regard Greek nostalgia not as an escapist amnesia but as ‘an empowering
force’ and strategy ‘of self-assertion, even of resistance to external interference’.⁴⁶
These models have in turn informed scholarship on the Greek novels, which
can be read as complex articulations of Greek identity and, more forcefully, as
‘expression[s] of cultural hegemony’.⁴⁷ With their emphasis on the classical past,⁴⁸
apparent absence of Rome,⁴⁹ urban elite protagonists, the polis, and marriage, the
novels are held by some scholars to reflect a culturally regenerative force, sym-
bolically advancing the perpetuation of the Greek elite and their interests, or as
providing them with a cultural script in response to Roman domination.⁵⁰ Others
promote a view of the novels as escapist fictions that offer alternative modes of
reality, and as consolations for the political disempowerment felt by Greeks in
the post-Hellenistic world.⁵¹ However, scholars are increasingly detecting the
⁴¹ Fuchs (1938); Bowie (1970); Swain (1996), esp. 17–64.

⁴² Kennedy (1974) 20; Russell (1983) 108–9; contra Bowersock (1969) 15; Schmitz (1999) 74. For a
corrective see Guast (2017).
⁴³ Whitmarsh (2013b) sketches a variety of discursive strategies by which imperial Greeks ‘resist’
Rome.
⁴⁴ Goldhill (2001) and Whitmarsh (2001c) are fundamental; see also Konstan and Saïd (2006);
Vanacker and Zuiderhoek (2017). Christianity further complicates the picture: Kaldellis (2007) 13–41;
Perkins (2009); Eshelman (2012).
⁴⁵ Whitmarsh (2001c), quotation at 2, with 41–130 on mimesis and paideia. Essays in Borg (2004)
offer a range of responses to imperial paideia. Schmitz (1997) anthropologizes paideia as an exclu-
sionary tactic mobilized by the Greek elite as a way of symbolically justifying their position.
⁴⁶ Alcock (1993), (2002) 36–98, quotations at 96, 41.
⁴⁷ Swain (1996) 101–31, quotation at 106. See Lalanne (2006) on the novels as ‘rites de passage’.
⁴⁸ Hägg (1987), Bowie (2006).
⁴⁹ Kim (2008) 147–8; Connors (2008) 162; Whitmarsh (2011b) 5. See n. 52 below on the presence of
Rome in the novels.
⁵⁰ On marriage in this connection see Cooper (1996) 20–44; Perkins (2009) 72–5.
⁵¹ Reardon (1969), (1991) 29; Hägg (1983) 16; Holzberg (1995) 47. Bakhtin (1981) 84–258 views the
novels as apolitical; for a corrective see Whitmarsh (2005a). Stephens (2008) 70 argues that the
presence of Rome in the novels would reduce the status of Greeks to that of subalterns; Doody
(1996) 28 suggests that the pre-Roman past reminds readers that ‘there was a cultural tradition aside
from and before the Romans, and thus cultural alternatives’.
 9
presence of Rome and Roman institutions in the novels (especially Chariton); and
in any case, Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca is contextualized in the second century amid
Roman military operations on the Parthian border (Photius Bibl. 75b27).⁵²
A further accelerant responsible for perpetuating the orthodox position is the
stereotype that, while the Romans are the arbiters of power, the Greeks are
the gatekeepers of culture. A canonical articulation of this dynamic occurs in
the words of Vergil’s Anchises to his son Aeneas in the Underworld in the Aeneid,
famously distinguishing between ‘cultural Greeks’ (sculpture, natural philosophy,
astronomy) and ‘military Romans’ (empire, pacification, war) (6.847–53).⁵³
In Horace’s Epistle to Augustus, we hear that ‘Greece, the captive, made her savage
victor captive, and imported her arts into rustic Latium’ (Graecia capta ferum
uictorem cepit et artes / intulit agresti Latio, Epist. 2.1.156–7), echoing an analo-
gous sentiment registered in a second-century  epigram by Porcius Licinus (fr.
1 Courtney).⁵⁴ Latin literature corroborates the stereotype by figuring its relation-
ship with Greek literature via images of rivalry and warfare.⁵⁵ In Cicero’s De
Oratore, Antonius can even wonder whether there is any Greek who thinks that
the Romans ‘understand anything’ (quidquam intellegere, 2.77). The stereotypical
contrast between ‘military Romans’ and ‘cultural Greeks’ is thus at one level a
Roman confection, but it is also amply endorsed and ventilated by the Greeks,
who can be psychologized as compensating for their lack of power by flexing their
paideia.⁵⁶ (There is an added irony here: in countering Roman power with paideia,
the Greeks are in fact employing a technique already used by Romans such as
Cicero who, in response to the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, withdrew to their
books to practise a ‘paideia Romana’.)⁵⁷ At any rate, by the end of the first century
 the stereotype has broken down to the degree that Quintilian, in Book 10 of his
Institutio Oratoria, can set Greek and Latin authors side by side in such a way that
presents the Latin literary system as a genuine rival of (and alternative to) that of
the Greeks.⁵⁸ Feeney refers to this emergence of Latin literature from Greek
literature as the ‘Latin translation project’ and emphasizes the oddity of a situation
in which the culture of a conquered group (the Greeks) takes on a status higher
than that of the conquering group (the Romans).⁵⁹ However, as Feeney and others
recognize, the process was one of creative adaptation rather than slavish imitation,
⁵² Chariton: Schwartz (2003); Jolowicz (2018a), (2018b), (2018c). Iamblichus: Morales (2006).
⁵³ See Wallace-Hadrill (1988) on Roman fastidiousness in this regard.
⁵⁴ See further: Cic. Arch. 10; Hor. Ars P. 323–4; Ov. Fast. 2.483, 3.101–2; Plin. Ep. 8.24.
⁵⁵ Hutchinson (2013) 30–2; Feeney (2016) 53.
⁵⁶ Whitmarsh (2001c) 17–20, with 114: ‘the acquisition and display of paideia was part of an
ongoing process in defining manhood, . . . a surrogate for the military activity that defined the virility
of an earlier period.’ Cf. Lamberton (1997) 152–3; Whitmarsh (2011a) 199–201, on imperial Greek
epigram; Borg (2011) 234; Spawforth (2012) 86–100, 117–30, on the Roman perpetuation of the
stereotype of warlike Spartans; Jolowicz (2018c) 130–1, on Chariton. Bowie (2014) 41 suggests that
awareness of this stereotype might be one reason preventing Greeks from joining the Roman army.
⁵⁷ Gildenhard (2007) on Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. ⁵⁸ Nicolai (2014).
⁵⁹ Feeney (2016).
10       
which is relevant to my argument that, in the eyes of learned Greeks, Latin

literature was worthy of some attention.
One of the problems of the orthodox position is that it operates under the
illusion that cultures are hermetically sealed, as well as being static over time. To
be sure, Greeks were seen as affecting a pose of exclusivity towards other cultures,
in contrast to the famously assimilative Romans.⁶⁰ Yet various approaches dem-
onstrate that Greek culture, far from being autonomous, was highly receptive to
other cultures. While a culture might ‘represent itself as being its own knowledge-
world’, it is in fact ‘porous and unstable’.⁶¹ The importance of Egyptian and Near
Eastern models for early Greek hexameter poetry has been well established;⁶²
Miller’s study of fifth-century Athenian rhetoric unmasks the Greeks’ deep famil-
iarity with Achaemenid culture;⁶³ and Greeks in Alexandria were clearly familiar
with Egyptian culture and customs (if not necessarily the language).⁶⁴ This
cultural openness should make us question whether Rome (and its literature) is
as shut out from imperial Greek culture as has been generally assumed.
Rome’s extension of power over the Mediterranean basin and the eventual
creation of an empire have generated an array of frameworks according to which it
is possible to model the cultural interaction between Greeks and Romans. While it
is reasonable to talk of Rome’s ‘Hellenization’ (and the phenomenon of ‘philhel-
lenism’) during the Middle and Late Republic,⁶⁵ we must avoid nineteenth-
century models that see the process of ‘Romanization’ as a necessarily imperialist
or top-down imposition by the conquering culture.⁶⁶ The picture is in fact less
neat. In connection with the Roman conquest of Gaul, for example, Woolf
demonstrates that it was via the creation of a Gallo-Roman aristocracy, who
could act as ‘cultural brokers’ (a concept to which I shall return), that the process
of ‘becoming Roman’ could take place.⁶⁷ While terms such as ‘Romanization’ and
‘Hellenization’ have heuristic value, they are not unproblematic.⁶⁸ Nor are the
homogenizing categories of ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ self-evident, but negotiable
propositions in an increasingly cosmopolitan world in which differentiations are
being lost.⁶⁹ Indeed, in the imperial period the distinction between ‘Greek’ and
‘Roman’ becomes even harder to sustain. Whitmarsh argues for a model of
Graeco-Roman relations in which the Greeks, while attempting to maintain the
⁶⁰ Greek exceptionalism: de Romilly (1993) 283–92. Roman assimilative impulse: Dench (2005);
Feeney (2016) 10–11, 28; cf. Woolf (1998) 58–9.
⁶¹ Quotations at Feeney (2016) 19. ⁶² E.g. West (1997); Metcalf (2015).
⁶³ Miller (1997).
⁶⁴ Stephens (2003); Feeney (2016) 19–22; Rutherford (2016). Greek elite resistance to the Egyptian
language: Rochette (1994).
⁶⁵ Ferrary (1988) and (2017); articles in Perrin (2007).
⁶⁶ Millett (1990); Wallace-Hadrill (2008) 10. Sartre (2007) 229 notes that discussions of
‘Romanization’ tend to be political, in contrast to those of ‘Hellenization’, which tend to be cultural.
⁶⁷ Woolf (1998), quotation at 15; cf. Wallace-Hadrill (2008) 26.
⁶⁸ See, e.g., Wallace-Hadrill (2008) 17–28, 97–8.
⁶⁹ Wallace-Hadrill (2008) 17; Feeney (2016) 9–11.
 11
fiction of their cultural autonomy, are ever aware of their interdependence with,
and compromised position vis-à-vis, Rome.⁷⁰ Spawforth suggests that Greek
immersion in the past, and Atticism in particular, is in fact in line with the
Augustan ideological agenda, which promoted the Greek past as a repository of
ethical paradigms and generally encouraged cohesion amongst the Greeks; on this
model, the Atticizing movement is itself a form of accommodation with (rather
than resistance to) Rome.⁷¹ This framework has the advantage of emphasizing the
cultural permeability of the period, and it rejects the idea that imperial Greeks
operate within a quarantined bubble.⁷² In this regard Spawforth follows Woolf,
who detects the existence of a ‘dynamic tension’ between Greek and Roman
cultures in the period, which likewise paves the way for a methodological
approach that allows for two-way traffic between the Romans and the Greeks.⁷³
This climate of cultural exchange makes sense given the dynamic identity
politics of the period, in which the same individual could play multiple roles.
From the first century , and especially following the Battle of Actium, Rome
became a ‘New Athens’ and cultural centre, home to an increasing number of
Greek intellectuals such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus who would have grown
familiar with ‘Roman cultural achievements . . . [,] Latin language, and even . . .
Roman literature’.⁷⁴ The Roman franchise became more accessible, and from the
Augustan period onwards extension of citizenship to Greeks was not uncom-
mon.⁷⁵ The Flavian period saw an increased incorporation of eastern Greeks into
the mechanisms of imperial governance, and, by the time of Trajan, half of the
non-Italian senators were Greek.⁷⁶ A native of Ephesus, for instance, might now
be a Roman citizen, an equestrian, or a senator; a number of Greeks even attained
the consulship (a process that began under Domitian),⁷⁷ for example Ti. Julius
Celsus Polemaeanus of Sardis (92 ), the Quintilii brothers of Alexandria Troas
(151 ), and Herodes Atticus (143 ), the latter also archon at Athens and a
sophist.⁷⁸ Men of this sort were obliged to reside in Italy,⁷⁹ and likely to have come
⁷⁰ Whitmarsh (2001c).
⁷¹ Spawforth (2012), following the ‘oxygenation’ model of Wallace-Hadrill (2008) 27, for whom
Rome ‘oxygenates’ the empire with its own brand of Hellenism. On Atticism, see n. 40 above.
⁷² See Brunt (1994) on the ‘bubble’ of the Second Sophistic. ⁷³ Woolf (1994) 135.
⁷⁴ See essays in Schmitz and Wiater (2011) on the identity politics of Greeks in first-century 
Rome, quotation at Hidber (2011) 115; cf. Nicolai (2016). Polybius and Rome: Moreno Leoni (2017).
Diodorus and Rome: Muntz (2017).
⁷⁵ Millar (1977) 477–90; Sherwin-White (1973) 306–11; Ando (2000) 57–9; Byrne (2003), on
Roman citizens in Athens; Campanile (2004), on Ephesus and Smyrna; Wallace-Hadrill (2008)
451–3; Balzat (2011); Spawforth (2012) 41–5, 84. On multiple citizenship see Heller and Pont (2012);
Ştefan (2017). Sartre (2007) 234–6 argues against citizenship as having any particular cultural signifi-
cance.
⁷⁶ On Greek senators see Halfmann (1979) 71–81; Chastagnol (1992) 161–2; Birley (1997a); Newby
(2005) 139–40; further bibliography at Bowie (2014) 54.
⁷⁷ See Jones (1979) on Domitian and the Senate.
⁷⁸ Halfmann (1979) no. 16 (Celsus), no. 68 (Herodes). See Ricci (1998) on the Quintilii.
⁷⁹ Chastagnol (1992) 164–8.
12       
into contact with Latin literary products. Gleason suggests that the poem inscribed
on the memorial arch at Marathon (SEG 23.121), commissioned by Herodes for
his wife Regilla, and composed by Marcellus of Side, learnedly alludes to the
appearance of the Protesilaus–Laodamia myth in Catullus 68, where it is used to
express the depth of the poet’s love for Lesbia.⁸⁰ Individuals of this stripe inevit-
ably became experts at cultural code-switching, resulting in identities that were
dictated by context—first- and second-century Greek intellectuals such as Dio
Chrysostom, Plutarch, Appian, Lucian, and Arrian, as well as sophists in general,⁸¹
are representative of this ‘double vision’.⁸² Such men would have been versed in
many aspects of Roman culture, and would theoretically be in a position to
function as ‘cultural brokers’, disseminating knowledge of Latin poetry to the
wider population of the provincial elite.
Lower down the social ladder, Greek freedmen too could serve as imperial
advisors or pursue careers within the imperial government, for example as ab
epistulis graecis, responsible for communications between the emperor and Greek
provincials. Many of these were from Alexandria.⁸³ A word on the identity of
Achilles Tatius is relevant in this connection, whom the Suda claims to be
Alexandrian (Ἀλεξανδρεύς, α 4695, s.v. Ἀχιλλεὺς Στάτιος). Achilles also has
Roman affiliations: his name, variously attested as Statius (the same Suda entry)
or Tatius (Photius Bibl. 87, 94), is a common Roman nomen, and indeed the
double form of his name (Achilles Tatius) is suggestive of Roman citizenship.⁸⁴
Furthermore, the second century was the height of Roman power in Egypt, and it
is therefore ‘likely that [Achilles] would have been familiar with Roman ways’:
Hilton argues that Achilles ‘probably knew Latin’ and that ‘at times his Greek uses
Latin idioms’, as well as being familiar with Roman law, south Italian art, the
Roman novel of Petronius, Roman military practices, and the imperial signifi-
cance of the phoenix.⁸⁵ I shall discuss the relevance of Aphrodisias to Chariton
(see Section 0.5) and that of Mytilene to Longus (see Sections 7.1 and 7.10), but
here my point is that an engagement with Latin poetry in an author such as
Achilles—with his potentially Alexandrian identity, Roman name and citizenship,
and knowledge of Roman linguistic and cultural apparatus—should come as no
surprise.
⁸⁰ Gleason (2010) 135–42; on Herodes’ bicultural ancestry see Jones (2010) 112–13. On Herodes in
Antonine poetry see Skenteri (2005).
⁸¹ Bowersock (1969) emphasizes the political importance of sophists, in contrast to Reardon (1971);
Bowie (1982).
⁸² On Greek intellectual ‘double vision’ in this context see Madsen (2014); cf. Sartre (2015) on Strabo
and Plutarch. Wallace-Hadrill (2008) 6, 63–4 applies the linguistic model of ‘code-switching’ to
cultures.
⁸³ Observed by Bowie (1982) 43.
⁸⁴ Alexandrian Achilles: see Plepelits (1980) 3–6, (1996) 387–8; Yatromanolakis (1990) 19–23;
Whitmarsh (2020) 1–5.
⁸⁵ Hilton (2009), quotations at 101–2; on Petronius see p. 121 n. 5.
 13
Cultural brokerage assumes the mediating presence of individuals who straddle

the cultural fault lines between Greece and Rome. This might be in the form of
powerful Greeks in the city of Rome, who, according to the statue of Favorinus in
that orator’s Corinthian Oration, ‘incline towards Roman ways’ (πρὸς τὰ τῶν
Ῥωμαίων πράγματα ἀποκλίνοντας, [Dio] 37.25).⁸⁶ Or, conversely, it could include
the presence of Romans in Greek cities (both in ‘Old Greece’ and Asia Minor),
such as veteran soldiers and associations of negotiatores (businessmen), who
settled and intermarried with Greek locals: their influence is evident at the street
level by the import of Roman-style ceramics (such as drinking vessels and lamps),
at the civic level by Roman legal and calendrical apparatus, and at the linguistic
level by the plethora of Latin loanwords. The phenomenon of coloniae, especially
in the Greek east, had a palpable effect on neighbouring cities in this regard, and
catalysed the process of cultural interaction.⁸⁷ In connection with Latin poetry in
particular, two examples are instructive. First, an inscription from Aphrodisias
(a city to whose relevance I shall return: see Section 0.5) records the edict of a
certain Ti. Catius Asconius Silius Italicus, proconsul of Asia in 77 , regarding
the inviolability of the city’s doves, sacred to Aphrodite (IAph2007 13.609).⁸⁸ He is
to be identified with Silius Italicus, poet of the Punica, a Latin epic on the subject
of the Second Punic War.⁸⁹ Admittedly, Silius probably did not begin the com-
position of this poem until the decade following his proconsulship,⁹⁰ but the facts
permit a hypothetical scenario in which a powerful Roman with an active interest
in Latin poetic composition visits the city of Aphrodisias. A local, educated elite
may have had a stake in sharing in this interest.
The ultimate cultural broker would be the emperor himself, which brings me to
a second example, the famously philhellenic Hadrian: his artistic tastes were such
that they influenced the style of Athenian portraits bearing his image; more
pertinently, Hadrian composed poetry in Latin, on certain famous trimeters of
which—an apostrophe to his soul, composed as he approached death—Cassius
Dio may have modelled the last words of the daughter of Marcus Aurelius.⁹¹ More
generally, the influence of the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian on the writings of the
Greek literati is well documented.⁹²
⁸⁶ The culturally liminal figure of Favorinus himself knows ‘our Maro’, referring to Vergil’s
adaptation, at Aen. 4.366–7, of Hom. Il. 16.33–5 (Gell. NA 12.1.20; cf. 17.10.14); see Holford-
Strevens (1993) 206.
⁸⁷ MacMullen (2000) 1–30; Kearsley (2001); Sartre (2007).
⁸⁸ Commentary and bibliography available thereat.
⁸⁹ PIR² C1 474; Eck (1970) 82–3. The dating of Silius’ proconsulship to 77  is confirmed by Plin.
Ep. 3.7.
⁹⁰ See, e.g., Plin. Ep. 3.7; Mart. Ep. 7.63.9–12; Augoustakis (2010) 5–10.
⁹¹ Athenian portraits: Calandra (2015). Trimeter: SHA Hadr. 1.25.9 (animula uagula blandula /
hospes comesque corporis, ‘little soul, pleasant little wanderer, guest and companion of my body’); Dio
78.16.6a (ὦ δυστυχὲς ψυχίδιον ἐν πονηρῷ σώματι καθειργμένον, ἔξελθε, ‘unfortunate little soul, trapped
in a wretched body, come forth’); Courtney (1993) 382–3, citing Mattiacci (1982).
⁹² Fein (1994).
14       
It is therefore possible to move away from paradigms that figure the disposition
of the Greeks towards the Romans as one of resistance and antagonism; instead, it
often seems to be one of complicity, accommodation, negotiation, and a willing-
ness for cultural exchange. There is ample evidence that suggests that Greeks on
the mainland and in Asia Minor were happy to import and utilize a range of
Roman practices.⁹³ For example: legal procedures; the increasing emphasis on
distinguished and divine ancestry (especially the myth of Trojan origins: see
Section 0.5, p. 27 on Aphrodisias); gladiators (especially in the east, often spon-
sored by priests of the imperial cult or influenced by veteran colonists).⁹⁴
Architectural and material remains confirm this picture of Roman influence:
amphitheatres and Roman theatres (as at Pergamum); macella (‘markets’, as at
Sagalassus); judiciary basilicas (as at Pisidian Antioch, Xanthus, Hierapolis);
triumphal arches (as at Pisidian Antioch); aqueducts (as at Ephesus, Aspendus,
Side); nymphaea and other water features (as at Aphrodisias and Ephesus); bath-
gymnasium complexes (as at Miletus, Aphrodisias, Ephesus, Smyrna, Sardis); the
use of baked brick (as in the Augustan theatre at Sparta, and favoured by the
family of Celsus at Ephesus).⁹⁵ It may, of course, be the case that architectural
elements did not, for the Greeks, have the same cultural valence as literature—
Greek paideia is more concerned with the verbal than the visual and plastic arts—
but it stretches credulity that they were content to engage with the gamut of
Roman cultural phenomena with the sole exception of literature.
This section has attempted to sketch the deeply pervasive biculturality of the
period and has offered some reasons for why the older (minimalist) view of Greek
awareness of Roman cultural achievements is unsatisfactory. After addressing the
question of Greek–Latin bilingualism in Section 0.2, in Sections 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5
I shall establish some further contexts in which Greeks may have encountered
Latin literature (especially poetry), including education, the agonistic circuit, and
libraries; in doing so I shall press on evidence that has never been pressed in this
connection (much of it epigraphic and archaeological). My reading of the evidence
in these sections gives a deliberately cumulative and maximal view of the spread
and depth of Greek appreciation for Latin literature, which will thus offer a
counterweight to the traditionally pessimistic approach to this question.
⁹³ Meyer (2007) is a useful collection of essays.

⁹⁴ Law: Millar (1999); Kantor (2009). Ancestry: Sartre (2007) 243; Jones (2010) 68–74; Spawforth
(2012) 40. Gladiators: L. Robert (1940) 246–7, with 286 n. 3 on Dio Or. 31.122; Wiedemann (1992)
43–4, 141–5; Mann (2011).
⁹⁵ On Roman elements in Greek architecture see essays in Macready and Thomson (1987); Sartre
(2007) 236–40; Thomas (2013); Kenzler (2013); cf. Fein (1994) 331–3 on connections between
Hadrian, Trajan, and architects. Aqueducts: Coulton (1987). Nymphaea and water features: Walker
(1987); Wilson (2016). Amphitheatres: Bowie (1970) 202, with n. 99; Anderson (1993) 4. Bath-
gymnasium complexes: Farrington (1987); Yegül (1992) 250–313; Newby (2005) 230–46. Baked
brick: Waywell and Walker (2001) 288; Spawforth (2012) 123; Lancaster (2015) 66–9 on the Celsii;
on the library of T. Flavius Severianus Neon at Hadrianic Sagalassus see n. 176 below.
 15
0.2 Greek–Latin Bilingualism
Careers in Rome require a knowledge of Latin.⁹⁶ Valerius Maximus reports that

Romans respond to Greeks only in Latin (2.2.2–3), and Suetonius transmits an
anecdote in which Claudius even deprived a Greek of his citizenship for his
inability to speak the language (Claud. 16.2; cf. Dio 60.17.3–4). Of course, the
necessity for Greek speakers to have a knowledge of Latin in Rome is not by
default to be applied to Greek speakers outside of Rome.⁹⁷ Evidence for Latin-
learning in the west is not lacking.⁹⁸ The east raises more difficulties. There is no
evidence for institutionalized Latin-learning in the east until the edict of
Theodosius II in 425  (Codex Theodosianus XIV 9.3.1), prior to which it was
probably piecemeal and informal, not least because Rome never imposed its
language on the eastern provinces (where, except in coloniae, the language of
administration remained Greek).⁹⁹ That said, there is evidence that bilingual
Greeks throughout the empire had at least a working knowledge of Latin and
access to Latin teachers.¹⁰⁰ Bilingual inscriptions from Asia Minor during the first
two centuries are numerous.¹⁰¹ The epitaph discussed at the beginning of this
Introduction guarantees the presence of a γραμματικὸς Ῥωμαικός in early second-
century Thyatira. Rochette suggests that an anecdote preserved by Gellius, in
which the Antonine scholar recounts a contretemps with a ‘conceited grammar-
ian’ (grammatico praestigioso) ‘in the town of Eleusis’ in Attica (in oppido
Eleusino), evidences the possibility not only of a Latin grammarian but even a
Latin school in that area (NA 8.10).¹⁰²
Although Greek speakers were more likely to learn Latin as adults rather than
as children, there is plentiful evidence of Latin-learning tools and materials
designed for Greek speakers.¹⁰³ Rochette comprehensively assembles the evidence
for knowledge of Latin language and literature amongst a diverse range of imperial
Greek authors.¹⁰⁴ Plutarch claims not to have learned Latin until later in life
⁹⁶ Jones (2005) 265, 267–8, on eastern Greek senators.

⁹⁷ See McNelis (2002) on Greek grammarians in Roman society in the first century .
⁹⁸ IG XIV 2434 attests to a γραμματικὸς Ῥωμαικός in Massilia. See also Dionisotti (1982).
⁹⁹ Philostr. VA 5.36 recounts an anecdote in which Apollonius recommends to Vespasian that
governance in the eastern provinces be conducted in Greek; cf. Kaimio (1979) 117–18. On Latin in the
coloniae see Eck (2009).
¹⁰⁰ Nesselrath (2013); Dickey (2015b); Rochette (see n. 3 above). Discussions of Greek–Roman
bilingualism include Rochette (1997), (2010), (2011); Adams, Janse, and Swain (2002); Adams (2003);
Torres Guerra (2011); Mullen (2011); Marganne and Rochette (2013).
¹⁰¹ See n. 2 above.
¹⁰² See n. 3 above. On the epigraphic evidence for imperial grammatici/γραμματικοί see Kaster
(1988), esp. 463–78 on Latin teachers; Agusta-Boularot (1994).
¹⁰³ Rochette (1997) 177–206; Cribiore (2003–4), (2007) 57–62; Gärtner (2005) 16–18; Miguélez-
Cavero (2013) 64–6 offers a useful summary. See Dickey (2012) on the Hermeneumata
Pseudodositheana. Woolf (1994) 131 observes that the separate educational systems of the Romans
and Greeks ‘must have contributed to maintaining the separate integrity of each of the two traditions’.
On education in Roman Egypt see Cribiore (1996), (2001); Morgan (1998).
¹⁰⁴ Rochette (1997), esp. 257–326. On Polybius’ Latinisms see Dubuisson (1985).
16       
(Dem. 2.2), although this may simply be a way of avoiding having to write about
Demosthenes and Cicero as ‘literary’ figures;¹⁰⁵ moreover, he attests to Latin as a
universal language (Quaest. Plat. 1010d).¹⁰⁶ Indeed, many Greek authors, as well
as grammarians such as Tyrannion and Philoxenus, exhibit an interest in the
apparently Greek origins of the Latin language.¹⁰⁷ Adams explores in detail
the evidence for bilingualism across a range of social classes in Egypt, through
the evidence of (for example) the archives of Tiberianus and Terentianus at
Karanis and that of Abbinaeus at Dionysias.¹⁰⁸ Although Adams works to debunk
the ‘myth that Greeks did not learn Latin’ and to soften the dogma that Latin
was the ‘official’ language of the army and law courts,¹⁰⁹ it is still primarily the
consensus that Latin was the language of power and that, while Romans learned
Greek for its cultural capital, Greeks learned Latin for its use value. The
following chapters will demonstrate, however, that the Greek novels evidence
an engagement with Latin poetry that goes beyond mere use value.
0.3 Latin Literary Papyri in the Context of Education
Feeney cautions that linguistic interaction does not necessarily equate to literary
interaction,¹¹⁰ but the widespread bilingualism of the Greek elite at least makes the
latter a possibility. The existence of Latin papyri (some of which preserve Latin
poetry in various formats) provides corroborating material, although the eviden-
tial value of this material is, for our purposes, limited by the fact that such a high
proportion of it dates from after 300 .¹¹¹ It is also necessary to admit that the
majority of Latin papyri of the first two centuries relate to jurisprudence (for
example) rather than to literary texts; and those instances of Latin poetry (such as
¹⁰⁵ Such is the suggestion of Rochette (n. 3 above), following Dubuisson (1979) 95–6. On this
passage see Stadter (2014) 133–7, with further bibliography.
¹⁰⁶ Cf. also Plin. HN 3.39; Aug. De ciu. D. 19.7. A possible Latin error at Plut. Tib. Gracch. 13.6:
Gamberale (1995).
¹⁰⁷ Greek grammarians: Sánchez-Ostiz (2009); Hintzen (2011); Nicolai (2016); de Jonge (2019), on
‘intercultural competition’. Rochette (1997) 42–5, 49–83 surveys the ways in which the Greeks talk
about Latin and the Romans more generally. On the influence of Latin on Greek see Hahn (1906);
Biville (1990–5).
¹⁰⁸ Adams (2003), esp. 527–641, on Latin in Egypt.
¹⁰⁹ Adams (2003) 599–600, 635–7, 758–9; quotation at 437. ¹¹⁰ Feeney (2016) 32.
¹¹¹ A search of the Leuven Database of Ancient Books reveals that, of 2,180 Latin (or bilingual)
papyri (as compared to 9,642 Greek), only 100 of these can be dated prior to 300 , 75 prior to 200 ,
44 prior to 100 , and prior to 50  they consist predominantly of the Herculaneum papyri; I thank
Amin Benaissa and Susan Stephens for discussing these figures with me. On Latin papyri, esp. from
Egypt, see Cavenaile (1958); Rochette (1994), (1997) 188–204; Buzón (2014). Vergilian papyri specif-
ically: Rochette (1990); Scappaticcio (2013); Dickey (2015a) 807 n. 2, with further bibliography;
Fressura (2017). On the Herculaneum papyri, which probably include fragments of Ennius,
Lucretius, and a poem De Bello Actiaco, see Kleve (1989), (1990); Janko (2002) 30–1; Butterfield
(2013) 5–6 is cautious; Nodar (2014); see Sider (1997) 19–20 and Cairns (2006) 297 on the Greek
apostrophe of the well-known men of Latin letters, Plotius, Varius, Vergil, and Quintilius (ὦ Πλώτιε
καὶ Οὐάρ[ι]ε καὶ Οὐεργ[ί]λιε καὶ Κοϊντ[ί]λιε, P.Herc. Paris. 2.21–3).
 17
tablets preserving Vergil’s Georgics, Aeneid, and even the pseudo-Vergilian Copa
at Vindolanda in Britannia, and a papyrus at Herod’s fortress at Masada in the
first century ; or Gallus’ elegies on a papyrus at Qas: r Ibrîm in Egypt) can be
attributed to the presence of Roman soldiery at the frontiers of the empire.¹¹² As
Dickey cautions, ‘a work of Latin literature found in Egypt could have been used
by a Greek speaker as a vehicle for practising Latin, but it might also have been
used by a Latin speaker’.¹¹³
Papyrological remains and pedagogical treatises, however, confirm that poetry
played a crucial role in education, and the presence of Vergil and Cicero is well
attested in an educational context in the form of bilingual lexica.¹¹⁴ Annotated
texts of Terence, Cicero, Sallust, and Juvenal are extant,¹¹⁵ representing ‘specific
standard editions intended for circulation in a large number of copies’;¹¹⁶ the
number of such Vergilian texts indicates that author’s ‘pre-eminence among
Greeks in Egypt’.¹¹⁷ There is in addition an annotated portion of Seneca’s
Medea.¹¹⁸ Most of these are from the third century and later, although at least
five of the Vergilian papyri can be dated with certainty to the first two centuries,¹¹⁹
as can one Ciceronian papyrus to the first century.¹²⁰ There are also first- and
second-century school exercises on Vergil.¹²¹ Dickey demonstrates that ‘columnar
translation’—that is, ‘distinctive narrow columns’, one to three words wide, of a
Latin original beside a Greek translation—of, for example, Vergil and Cicero was
‘evidently used by Greek-speaking students when they first started to read Latin
literature’, and was a pedagogical mode originating from the Latin-speaking
west.¹²² To be sure, the translations are literal, in prose, and occasionally misun-
derstand the Latin, and at any rate the columnar format for Vergil does not appear
until the fourth century; but the papyri evidence the claim that Greek speakers
began their Latin-learning with Vergil, a process that becomes more visible
towards the second century (which is also the period during which there is a
demonstrable increase in the presence of Latinisms in Greek documentary
¹¹² Vergil in Britannia: T.Vindol. II 118, II 452, IV 854; Bowman (1994) 11; Bowman, Thomas,
Tomlin (2010) 195–6 on T.Vindol. IV 856 (Copa 28). Masada: P.Masada II 721 verso inv. 1039–210.
Gallus: P.QasrIbrim inv. 78–3–11/1; Anderson, Parsons, Nisbet (1979).
¹¹³ Dickey (2012) 6, with 7–10 and fig. 1.1.
¹¹⁴ Morgan (1998) 90–119, stating, however, at 99, that ‘Latin language and literature are virtually
ignored by Greek authors and the papyri alike’; Dickey (2012) 5 cautiously notes that Latin was not part
of the elementary-school curriculum for Greek speakers, and that ‘Greek speakers had little interest in
Latin literature’.
¹¹⁵ Terence: P.Oxy. 2401; LDAB 3983; see Morgan (1998) 164–7. Cicero: LDAB 552–7, 560–1.
Sallust: LDAB 3875, 3877; Suda ζ 73 records a Hadrianic Zenobios who translated Sallust’s Histories
into Greek. Juvenal: LDAB 2559. See further Gaebel (1970); McNamee (2007) 473–92.
¹¹⁶ Rochette (1997) 196 (translation mine). ¹¹⁷ McNamee (2007) 57–8.
¹¹⁸ P.Mich. inv. 4969. See Markus and Schwendner (1997).
¹¹⁹ Vergil papyri from the first two centuries (Egypt and elsewhere): O.Claud. I 190 inv. 3637; P.
Hawara I 24 inv. P. 24; P.Masada II 721 verso inv. 1039–210; PSI XIII 1307 verso; P.Narm. recto inv.
66.362.
¹²⁰ First century: LDAB 561. ¹²¹ P.Oxy. 3554; P.Tebt. 686. See Cockle (1979).
¹²² Dickey (2015a), quotation at 807. Cf. also Dickey (2010).
18       
papyri).¹²³ It is therefore clear that Vergil, a model of high poetry, was being read
by Greek speakers in Egypt at this period. It is the general consensus that these
materials were for learning the Latin language rather than for mastering Latin
literature;¹²⁴ however, phenomena such as word lists and glossaries provide a
venue in which Greek-speaking Latin-learners would engage with Latin poetry.
0.4 Further Evidence for Knowledge of Latin Poetry
It is clear from this summary that Vergil is one of the primary authors used by
Greek speakers to learn Latin.¹²⁵ Knowledge of Vergil among Greek authors of the
first two and a half centuries, although scattered, is in evidence.¹²⁶ Seneca the Elder
reports how Lucius Cestius Pius, an Augustan Greek from Smyrna (who, Jerome
tells us, learned Latin in Rome, Chron. 167.2 Helm), struggled to imitate Aeneid
8.26–7 (Contr. 7.1.27).¹²⁷ More successfully, Seneca also reports that Claudius’
powerful freedman Polybius composed a metaphrasis of the Aeneid in Greek
prose, as he had also done for Homer into Latin (Cons. ad Pol. 8.2).¹²⁸ Indeed, if
we are looking for a possible catalyst for the influence of Latin poetry on Greek
prose in the early imperial period, then Claudius’ freedman, the metaphrast
Polybius, looks like a good candidate.
There are further piecemeal notices: the Suda records a certain Arrian epopoios
who translated the Georgics (α 3867);¹²⁹ a scholion to Plato (ad Phaedr. 244b)
refers to Vergil’s naming of the Sibyl as Deiphobe (at Aeneid 6.36); Lucian (Salt.
46) and the author of A.P. 16.151 (see Section 3.3) exhibit an awareness of Vergil’s
treatment of the Dido–Aeneas story;¹³⁰ an epigram by Erycius (A.P. 6.96) appears
to allude to the Eclogues (7.3–4);¹³¹ an Orphic papyrus (P.Bon. 4) contains
proximities to Vergil’s Underworld;¹³² and Photius knows Vergil’s birthday
from Hadrian’s Greek freedman Phlegon of Tralles (Bibl. 97).
Later evidence is more systematic. There are a number of Greek translations of
Vergil in a Christian context, mostly dating from the fourth century onwards.¹³³
¹²³ Latinisms in Greek documentary papyri: Dickey (2003).

¹²⁴ More positively, Kramer (2001) 28 suggests that the ‘main goal’ of studying Latin was to become
familiar with its literature.
¹²⁵ Thus Irmscher (1985) and González Senmartí (1985), discussing the role of Vergil in later Greek
literature.
¹²⁶ Holford-Strevens (1993) is a useful discussion. ¹²⁷ Cestius: PIR² C 575.
¹²⁸ Polybius: PIR² P 427.
¹²⁹ Swain (1991) dates him to the early third century and locates him in Pergamum. Holford-
Strevens (1993) 204 notes the impossibility of determining whether such works ‘fulfilled a popular
demand or were mere private eccentricities’.
¹³⁰ Ov. Tr. 2.533–6 registers the story of Dido and Aeneas as the most popular portion of the Aeneid.
¹³¹ Discussion and further bibliography: Lipka (2001) 116–17; Hubbard (2006b) 511 n. 35; Gärtner
(2013) 113 n. 99. Bowie (1985) 82–3 posits a common source in Philitas.
¹³² Discussions: Treu (1954); Lloyd-Jones and Parsons (1978).
¹³³ Reichmann (1943); Fisher (1982); Rochette (1997) 188–98, 302–19.
 19
Pisander of Laranda, who composed a Heroikai Theogamiai in sixty books under

Alexander Severus, imitated Vergil’s narrative of the fall of Troy so closely that
Macrobius mistakenly believes that Vergil imitated Pisander (Sat. 5.2.4). On the
basis of the above, Gärtner’s conclusion that Greeks are only interested in Vergil
for phenomena that are amenable to a Greek or a romantic perspective—the fall of
Troy (especially qua Rome’s metropolis), the Wooden Horse, and the relationship
between Aeneas and Dido—may not be the whole story.¹³⁴
There is further anecdotal and papyrological evidence for imperial Greek
knowledge of Latin poetry beyond that of Vergil. Gellius reports an occasion at
the birthday party of a young equestrian from Asia (NA 19.9). Among those
attending are the Spanish rhetor Antonius Julianus, and some learned Greeks
who, Gellius claims, are acquainted with Latin poetry.¹³⁵ After listening to enter-
tainments consisting of recitals of Sappho, Anacreon, and some recent erotic
elegies, the Greeks proceed to mock Antonius for his barbarous Spanish
accent—their ears are clearly well attuned to the various intonations of Latin.
They also rail at the inferiority of Latin poetry in contrast to Greek, but they make
the following exceptions:
Perhaps a few of Catullus and also possibly a few of Calvus; for the compositions
of Laevius were overwrought, those of Hortensius without elegance, of Cinna
harsh, of Memmius rude, and in short those of all the poets without polish or
melody. (NA 19.9.7 (trans. Rolfe, adapted))
Even allowing for the complex cultural self-positioning at work in this episode,
it is worth pressing the possibility that there is more to it than mere satire of the
idea that Greeks do not like Latin poetry. The poets mentioned by the Greeks
are distinguished by their late Republican and ‘neoteric’ affiliations. Catullus is
known for translating and closely adapting Greek poetry.¹³⁶ The ‘Laevius’
mentioned is probably Laevius Melissus, whose name shows Greek origin, and
who exhibits a bent for the style of Anacreon.¹³⁷ ‘Memmius’ can be identified
with Gaius Memmius (patron of the poet Lucretius), whom Cicero describes as an
admirer of Greek literature and a scorner of Latin (Brut. 247). When Antonius
proceeds to rebut the criticisms of the Greeks, he quotes the Latin poetry of Valerius
Aedituus and Quintus Catulus, whose verses themselves look like adaptations of the
Fragmentum Grenfellianum and an epigram of Callimachus.¹³⁸ All the Latin poets
are either Hellenophile in their poetic inclinations or translators of Greek poetry.
¹³⁴ Gärtner (2013) 96.

¹³⁵ On this episode, and Antonius Julianus in Gellius, see Baldwin (1975) 42–3, 63–4; Holford-Strevens
(2003) 66–7, 86–8, 233. I learned much about this passage from discussion with Scott DiGiulio.
¹³⁶ Catullus: Cat. 51 and Sapph. fr. 31 V.; Cat. 66 and Callimachus’ Coma Berenices (fr. 110 Pf.).
¹³⁷ Courtney (1993) 118–43, with 118–19 on Anacreon.
¹³⁸ Valerius Aedituus (Courtney (1993) 72–3) and the Fragmentum Grenfellianum (Powell 177–80);
Q. Lutatius Catulus (Courtney (1993) 75–8) and Callim. Epigr. 41 Pf.
20       
To what, then, do the ‘few’ poems of Catullus and Calvus refer? One might
speculate that they relate to the poets’ translations of Greek poems. The
‘Hortensius’ whom the Greeks mention as one of the inferior Latin poets can
probably be identified as Q. Hortensius Hortalus, the famous Republican orator
and consul of 69 . He, or perhaps his son (another Q. Hortensius, quaestor in
Asia 51–50 ), is also the addressee of Catullus 65, in which it transpires that he
has requested that Catullus compose a translation of Callimachus’ Coma
Berenices;¹³⁹ Catullus 66 is the result of that request. It is thus possible to conclude
that Gellius’ Greeks—albeit a learned subset who are not necessarily representa-
tive of the majority of elite Greeks during this period—cite Latin poets who are
known to have closely imitated or even translated earlier Greek poetry. They are
also perhaps aware of literary-critical responses to these Latin poets.
A letter composed by Pliny the Younger provides corroborating evidence, albeit
also anecdotal, for a Greek interest in Latin poetry in the High Empire. Pliny,
writing to Pontius Allifanus about his elegiac and hendecasyllabic compositions,
at the end of his letter jettisons all modesty and makes the following claim: ‘My
verses are read and copied, they are even sung, and set to the cithara or lyre by
Greeks who have learned Latin out of liking for my little book (a Graecis quoque,
quos Latine huius libelli amor docuit)’ (Ep. 7.4.9). The claim perhaps exposes
Pliny’s overconfidence or naivety,¹⁴⁰ or could even be pure confection on his part,
but if not, it attests to a group of native Greek speakers who learn Latin in order to
be able to understand Latin poetry, and who perform it in a public setting to the
accompaniment of a cithara.¹⁴¹
Both Pliny’s letter and the anecdote in Gellius relate to various forms of erotic
verse. On this basis, Hose argues that the erotic elegies contained in the shadowy
second-century  papyrus P.Oxy. 3723 (= SSH 1187) are in fact of the imperial
period and modelled on Latin elegy.¹⁴² He likewise points to the presence of erotic
elegies in the evening’s entertainment as evidence of the contemporary existence
and popularity of such poetry. In connection with Latin elegy, Magnelli also
suggests that a hexameter fragment of Menophilus of Damascus (SH 558, of
potentially imperial date), in which a female beloved provides the poetic inspir-
ation (rather than the more conventional Muses), bears the hallmarks of analo-
gous practices in Latin elegy.¹⁴³
¹³⁹ Cat. 65.15–16. On the identification of Catullus’ Hortalus as the father (rather than the son) see
Courtney (1993) 230; Du Quesnay (2012) 153–62; contra Hollis (2007) 155–7.
¹⁴⁰ Overconfidence: Marchesi (2008) 79, also noting, at 85, the ‘cultural implausibility’ of the
sentiment. Naivety: Trisoglio (1973) ad loc.
¹⁴¹ Sherwin-White (1966) ad loc. notes the cithara as indicative of a public setting.
¹⁴² Hose (1994a). Parsons (1988) notes the resemblance to Propertius but suspects a Hellenistic
model, as does Butrica (1996); the original editors, Parsons and Bremmer (1987), suspect it is
contemporary with the papyrus. Further discussion: Morelli (1994); Mastroiacovo (1998); Lightfoot
(1999) 26–8.
¹⁴³ Magnelli (2016) 44–6, comparing, at 45 n. 28, Prop. 2.1.3–4; Tib. 2.5.111–12 etc.
 21
Ovid’s tale of the ill-starred lovers Pyramus and Thisbe has often been con-
nected to the genre of the Greek novel:¹⁴⁴ the papyrus fragment P.Mich. inv. 3793
appears to offer a Greek version of Ovid’s treatment under the guise of characters
named Pamphilos and Eurydice; if this postdates the publication of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses,¹⁴⁵ then it is possible that the author is adapting Ovid.
Finally, two Greek authors are also worthy of mention: the late Republican
Voltacilius Pitholaus of Rhodes, who composed Latin epigrams (Macrob. Sat.
2.2.13); and another Rhodian named Euodos from the Neronian period, who is
said to have been ‘remarkable for Latin poetry’ (ὁ θαυμαζόμενος εἰς Ῥωμαικὴν
ποίησιν, Suda ε 3612).¹⁴⁶
0.5 Festivals and Libraries
Beyond the arena of education and other anecdotal evidence, there are two further
contexts in which Greek speakers might have developed a familiarity with Latin
poetry. First, the agonistic circuit. From early in their existence, competitions in
athletics, music, and other modes of performance at festivals (such as the old
periodos centres of Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and Isthmia) functioned as expres-
sions of Greek identity.¹⁴⁷ Festival culture in the Roman period became a mech-
anism of inter-polis rivalry between Greek cities,¹⁴⁸ and by the second century 
musical and poetry contests had eclipsed those of athletics in importance.¹⁴⁹ These
developments are part of what Robert refers to as an ‘agonistic explosion’: this was
especially the case in the Greek east, where festivals would have been the result of
endowments by the emperor or local euergetists, and often connected to the
imperial cult.¹⁵⁰ The competitors themselves were drawn largely from the pool
of local Greek elites,¹⁵¹ but Rome was usually at the top of the ideological agenda.
Newby points to the ‘emperor’s symbolic and physical presence in agonistic
culture: the emperors were also omnipresent, represented in the names of festivals,
in the statues carried in procession, or in commemorative images . . . [They] placed
themselves at the heart of festival culture, instituting or granting permission for
the most prestigious crown games, appointing agonistic officials, and regulating
¹⁴⁴ Due (1974) 123–7; Holzberg (1988), suggesting Ovidian parody of the Greek novel.
¹⁴⁵ The most recent edition of the papyrus, Stramaglia (2001), prefers a first-century  date.
¹⁴⁶ On Voltacilius and Euodos see Rochette (1997) 224, 238. I thank Thomas Coward for assistance
with these Rhodians.
¹⁴⁷ E.g. Newby (2005), esp. 246–55. The perceived threat to Romanness posed by Greek festivals is
evidenced by the abolition of a Greek-style festival in the Roman colony of Vienne, on which see Woolf
(2006).
¹⁴⁸ Heller (2006) 163–237; Guerber (2009) 215–301. ¹⁴⁹ Scanlon (2002) 55–6.
¹⁵⁰ Agonistic explosion: Robert (1984) 38. Useful overviews: Herz (1990); Van Nijf (1997) 130–46;
Newby (2005) 246–55; König (2005); Coleman and Nelis-Clément (2012); Graf (2015) 11–60; Remijsen
(2015) 70–3; Skotheim (2016); BNP s.v. ‘Competitions, Artistic’ (Lebrecht Schmidt).
¹⁵¹ Van Nijf (1999), (2001).
22       
the privileges granted to victorious performers and athletes.’¹⁵² Imperial involve-

ment in the organization, scheduling, and finances of Greek festivals is evident, for
example, from the three inscribed letters of Hadrian to the association of artists at
Alexandria Troas in 134 .¹⁵³ Emperors also introduced festivals on the Greek
model into Rome, such as Nero’s short-lived Neronia in 60  and Domitian’s
Capitolia in 86  (most of whose epigraphically attested victors came from the
Greek east, as is also the case for the as yet unpublished victor lists for the Sebastea
at Naples in 94 ), thereby establishing the imperial capital as an important
venue for those on the Greek festival circuit;¹⁵⁴ a headquarters for the inter-
national guild of Dionysiac technitae (professional theatrical organizations) was
even built in Rome in the mid-second century .¹⁵⁵ Rome and the emperor thus
sat at the centre of the Greek agonistic industry.
Latin poetry is attested as a competitive category at a number of festivals, both
within and outside of Rome. Lucan took the prize in such a category at the
Neronia with (unsurprisingly) a panegyric on Nero (Suet. Vit. Luc. init.), and
Statius performed at the Capitolia in the Latin poetry category on the theme of
Domitian’s triumph over the Germans and Dacians (Silu. 4.2.66–7).¹⁵⁶ This
harmonizes with what is known about Greek agones, in which orators and poets
would have taken the festival god or the imperial house as their panegyrical
topic.¹⁵⁷ Quintilian mentions the ‘praise of Capitoline Jupiter’ as a core theme at
the Capitolia (Inst. 3.7.4), which is corroborated by Statius’ account of his own
attempt to win the prize (Silu. 3.5.28–33), and Zeus is attested epigraphically as the
theme in the corresponding Greek category (IGR 1.116–17 no. 350). It is unclear
whether the poetry was pre-prepared or extemporized as a rule, but there is
evidence for the latter in both the Greek and Latin categories at the Neronia and
Capitolia.¹⁵⁸ As Nepos elaborates in the preface to his biographies, however, elite
Roman mores esteemed a culture of aversion to self-exhibition and performance
(pr. 5), and Tacitus reports a complaint that Roman nobles had ‘polluted them-
selves’ by competing in poetry competitions at the Neronia (Ann. 14.20.4); the
senatus consultum from Larinum testifies that such an aversion had been passed
into law in 19 .¹⁵⁹ Cultural and legal sensibilities in Rome and Italy thus make it
¹⁵² Newby (2005) 280.

¹⁵³ Petzl and Schwertheim (2006). See Boatwright (2000) 94–105 on Hadrian’s involvement in
Greek games more generally.
¹⁵⁴ See Newby (2005) 21–44.
¹⁵⁵ Greek games at Rome: Robert (1970); Woolf (2006) 172–6; Caldelli (1993), on the Capitolia.
Headquarters in Rome: Rigsby (2016), on P.Oxy. 5202.
¹⁵⁶ On Latin poets at the Capitolia see Caldelli (1993) 90–4; White (1998), to which this paragraph is
indebted.
¹⁵⁷ Wörrle (1988) 229–34, 248–50.
¹⁵⁸ Latin (Lucan on Orpheus at the Neronia): Vaccan life p. 355.21–5 Hosius. Greek (hexameters at
the Capitolia): IGR 1.116–17 no. 350 lines 6, 10, no. 351 line 7.
¹⁵⁹ Levick (1983).
 23
possible that Greeks, rather than Romans, would often have populated the cat-
egory of Latin poetry.¹⁶⁰
More crucial for our purposes, however, are two inscriptions from Asia Minor
that provide evidence for Latin poetry as worthy of its own category of competi-
tion in cities in the Greek east, perhaps influenced by developments brought about
by the flourishing agonistic culture in the imperial west.¹⁶¹ First is an inscription
from Aphrodisias (second/third century) that records a list of prizes for musical
and athletic contests (IAph2007 11.305).¹⁶² Included in the schedule for the
musical contest is a category for a ‘Latin-speaking poet’ (ποιητῇ Ῥωμαικῷ,
Block B, line 3).¹⁶³ Secondly, a similar inscription from Ephesus (also second/
third century) records a list of victors in a musical contest, among whom is a
certain Lucius Sertorius from Daldis, described as a ‘Greek- and Latin-speaking
poet’ (ποιη[τὴς] [Ἑλλ]ηνικὸς καὶ Ῥωμαικ[ός]); that is, he competed in a category
(or separate categories) of Greek and Latin poetry (IEph. 1149, lines 7–9).¹⁶⁴ The
inscription also records, in its final line, that the competitor is a περιοδονίκης
(that is, a winner of a prize at each of the old periodos centres), from which it is
possible to surmise that he performed at a number of cities in competitions of
high status, where he may also have delivered poetry in Latin. At the very least
this must mean that attendees of the agonistic circuit in Asia Minor could expect
to hear poetry in Latin.
Although it is possible to extrapolate, to a certain extent, from what we know
about the foundation of C. Julius Demosthenes at Oenoanda, or indeed about the
Capitolia at Rome (based, after all, on the Olympic model),¹⁶⁵ little is otherwise
known about the specific details of these categories. What is certain, however, is
that both Aphrodisias and Ephesus were significant Roman centres, and the
¹⁶⁰ White (1998) 86 grimly concludes that ‘so far from bolstering Roman national pride, the
Capitoline crown in Latin poetry seems to rank among the most uncoveted and obscure prizes in
European literary history’, attracting little attention from Latin writers, and the winners leaving barely
any trace of their victories.
¹⁶¹ It is uncertain whether the ῥωμαϊστής mentioned in IG XI 2.133 (Delos, 169 ) should be
translated as ‘actor of Latin comedies’: Ferri (2008).
¹⁶² Discussions: Reynolds (1982) doc. 61; Wörrle (1988) 230–6; Roueché (1993) doc. 52.
¹⁶³ Wörrle (1988) 230 describes the sequence in which the Latin poet features, between a ‘citharode’
(ἀνδρὶ κιθαρῳδῷ) and an undefined ‘poet’ (ποιητῇ, presumably Greek), as ‘unusual’ (translation mine).
¹⁶⁴ BÉ (1981) 441 no. 462 notes Lucius’ bilingualism; cf. Stephanes (1988) no. 263. In the inscription
the adjective Ῥωμαϊκ[ός] is followed by the noun [ὑμνο]γράφος. The word order (ποιη[τὴς] [Ἑλλ]ηνικὸς
καὶ Ῥωμαϊκ[ὸς] [ὑμνο]γράφος) is such that it is far more likely that Ῥωμαικ[ός] is to be associated with
what precedes (ποιη[τὴς] [Ἑλλ]ηνικὸς καὶ) rather than what follows ([ὑμνο]γράφος): the latter possi-
bility would result in a chiastic arrangement of noun–adjective adjective–noun, which is unlikely in an
inscription listing attributes; it would also require a belief in choirs of hymnodoi singing in Latin, which,
although of course possible, is currently unattested. A comma should therefore be placed after
Ῥωμαϊκ[ός]. I thank Aitor Blanco Pérez, Ewen Bowie, and Aneurin Ellis-Evans for fruitful discussions
about this inscription.
¹⁶⁵ On Demosthenes’ foundation see Wörrle (1988); see Caldelli (1993) on the Capitolia.
24       
inscriptions directly attest to artists performing in Latin alongside Greek.¹⁶⁶ More

importantly, categories of competition in Latin poetry suggest that such a per-
formance would have been well enough understood by an audience to make it
worthwhile. Whether we are dealing with a set syllabus of Latin poetry, perhaps
even translations of Greek classics such as that of Livius Andronicus (on which see
the next paragraph), (extemporized) panegyric on the emperor or festival god
(as at the Neronia and Capitolia), or even the poet’s own composition, is of course
impossible to determine. This is frustrating, as answers to these questions may
provide an insight into what the Greeks considered to be the Latin poetic canon.
A second context in which Greek speakers may have developed a familiarity
with Latin poetry is libraries. It is a given that Greeks working in Rome would
have had access to libraries in that city. A number of Greeks, both freedmen
and freemen, were a bybliothecis, that is, in charge of the Palatine and other
libraries in Rome (for example, C. Julius Hyginus, Pompeius Macer, C. Maecenas
Melissus),¹⁶⁷ and several slaves with Greek names are epigraphically attested as
serving in the Latin library of Palatine Apollo (a bibliotheca Latina Apollinis, CIL
6.5884, 6.5189, 6.5191).¹⁶⁸ Outside of Rome, evidence for Latin poetry in public
libraries is vanishingly rare, but there is some. An anecdote in Gellius preserves a
discussion about the meaning of the word insecanda used by Marcus Cato, which
proceeds to adduce usages of the word in Latin poets such as Ennius and Livius
Andronicus. Gellius then claims that he found, ‘in the library at Patrae (in
bibliotheca Patrensi), a manuscript of Livius Andronicus of undoubted antiquity,
entitled Ὀδύσσεια’ (NA 18.9.5). Patrae was a Roman colony founded by Augustus
in 16/15  for veterans, but the city’s complexion was very much a mixture of
Greek and Roman.¹⁶⁹ At any rate, this curious piece of evidence attests to a library
in Achaia containing a manuscript of Livius Andronicus’ Latin translation of the
Odyssey. Not only that, but, according to Gellius (and if indeed Gellius’ text is
secure), this particular manuscript carries a sillybon (title tag) bearing a Greek
title, perhaps therefore advertising its availability to Greek speakers.¹⁷⁰
Who was this Odusseia (with its Greek sillybon) for? There is at least one
document that sheds some light on the availability of Latin poetry in a Roman
colony in the Peloponnese. In 102  the orator and proconsul Marcus Antonius
portaged a fleet of ships over the Isthmus of Corinth on his way to confront
Cilician pirates. To mark its successful completion, the event was commemorated
¹⁶⁶ The ethnic Ῥωμαικός includes ‘Latin-speaking’ in its semantic range: e.g. Plut. Dem. 2.2; IGUR
1.62; P.Oxy. 2435.30–2 (‘Augustus sat in the temple of Apollo in the Latin library (Ῥωμαϊκῇ
βυβλιοθήκῃ)’); cf. Rochette (1997) 120–2.
¹⁶⁷ Bowie (2013) offers full discussion; cf. Houston (2002). ¹⁶⁸ See Houston (2014) 220–2.
¹⁶⁹ Holford-Strevens (2003) 189 notes of this episode that the manuscript of Livius was ‘no doubt
taken [to Patrae] by one of Augustus’ colonists’. On the city’s Greek–Roman complexion see Rizakis
(1996) 282–3, (2010).
¹⁷⁰ On Livius’ title see Feeney (2016) 63 with n. 104. On the Roman practice of using Greek titles for
their poems see Hutchinson (2013) 153. On sillyba see Houston (2014) 9–10.
 25
in a Latin poem consisting of five elegiac couplets, inscribed over a pre-existing

Greek inscription and set up on the Isthmus. From here it was later moved to
Julius Caesar’s new colony of Corinth, perhaps by Mark Antony, who occupied
Corinth in 30 . The poem, one of the earliest Latin elegiacs on stone, is as
follows:
quod neque conatus quisquanst neque [ . . . ]au[it].

noscite rem, ut fama facta feramus uirei.
auspicio [Ant]oni [M]arci pro consule classis
Isthmum traductast missaque per pelagus.
ipse iter eire profectus Sidam, classem Hirrus Atheneis
pro praetore anni e tempore constituit.
lucibus haec pauc[ei]s paruo perfecta tumultu
magna [a qu]om ratione atque salut[e . . . ]
q[u]ei probus est lauda[t], quei contra est in[ . . . ].
inuid[ea]nt, dum q[u . . . d]ecet id u[ . . . ].
The thing that no one has attempted nor [considered or dared]. Learn
this matter, that we may report the deeds of the man with fame.
Under the auspices of the proconsul Marcus Antonius, a fleet was
transferred over the Isthmus, and sent across the sea. The proconsul
set sail for Side, the propraetor Hirrus positioned the fleet in Athens
because of the time of year. This affair was accomplished within a few
days with little confusion, and with great planning and safety. The one
who is honest praises the man, the one who is contrary [envies]. Let
men envy provided that they [consider] what it befits.
(CIL I² 2662 = ILLRP 342)¹⁷¹
As with the copy of Livius’ poem in a library at Patrae, one might wonder about
the audience (intended and actual) of these inscribed Latin elegiacs, as well as their
author. With regard to the author, the style of the Latin has been described as
‘intolerably clumsy and prosaic’, but all the same indicative of a composer with
‘some acquaintance with higher Greek culture’.¹⁷² As for the audience, this would
have been diverse, especially after the transposition of the stone from the Isthmus
to the new colonia. The erasure of the orator Marcus Antonius’ name, presumably
subsequent to his grandson’s defeat at Actium, suggests that the inscription was
prominently placed.¹⁷³ The stone’s content and (re)placement were clearly
designed to showcase Roman military ingenuity, and indeed Strabo claims that
early colonists were made up of veterans (8.6.23). But Plutarch states that there
were also freedmen (Caes. 57.8), a study of whose onomastics indicates them to be
¹⁷¹ Text, translation, and discussion: Pettegrew (2016) 124–30, with further bibliography at 126 n. 64.
¹⁷² Gebhard and Dickie (2003) 276. ¹⁷³ Gebhard and Dickie (2003) 272.
26       
Greek.¹⁷⁴ By the second century  the city was thoroughly re-Hellenized:

Favorinus says as much to the Corinthians in his Corinthian Oration ([Dio]
37.25), and the city was Greek enough to be admitted by Hadrian to the
Panhellenion in 131/2 .¹⁷⁵ Bicultural Greeks would therefore certainly have
been exposed to this epigram.
Returning to the evidence of libraries, from Gellius’ anecdote about Livius’
Odusseia at Patrae it is difficult to know how far to speculate on the content of
other libraries across the Greek world. We know several libraries to have been
dedicated by Roman citizens. For example, those of T. Flavius Pantainos and
that of Hadrian at Athens, and of T. Flavius Severianus Neon at Hadrianic
Sagalassus.¹⁷⁶ An inscription from Berytus (later to become a major centre for
the study of Roman law) dating to 117  has been restored as referring to ‘Latin
and Greek libraries’ (βυ[β]λιοθηκ[ῶν] [Ῥωμαικῶν καὶ Ἑλ]ληνικῶν) at Alexandria
(65 Breccia).¹⁷⁷ The library of Celsus at Ephesus makes for a powerful case study.
The work of Kearsley shows that Ephesus was home to more mixed language
inscriptions than any other city in Asia.¹⁷⁸ The famous ‘Library of Celsus’ was
dedicated to Ti. Julius Celsus Polemaeanus (consul in 92 , and proconsul in 106/
7 ), by his son Ti. Julius Aquila, who himself became consul in 110 . Although
the structure of the library building itself was not bicameral (that is, it did not
obviously contain two rooms divided by language), a number of the inscriptional
dedications are bilingual and point to the bicultural context of the library.¹⁷⁹ The
lack of bicameralism is no argument against the library containing materials in
Latin. Celsus himself, in his capacity as curator of public works, would have been
familiar with the Flavian libraries at Rome, which would have provided the model
for various features of libraries in the Greek east.¹⁸⁰ Vespasian’s library in the
complex of the Templum Pacis at Rome, for example, was unicameral but also
bilingual.¹⁸¹ Even the Palatine library was single-roomed in its original Augustan
phase, but we know that the collections were bilingual.¹⁸² Within the plaza in
¹⁷⁴ See Millis (2010) 22–3.

¹⁷⁵ On Corinth’s re-Hellenization see Puech (2002) 452–4; Pawlak (2013), with further bibliography.
Pausanias, however, disavows the colony’s links with its Greek past (2.1.2, 5.1.2, 5.25.1); see Hutton
(2005) 147–9, 166–73.
¹⁷⁶ Waelkens (2002) 349 regards the use of fired brick at Neon’s library as an assertion of the
benefactor’s Romanitas. See n. 95 above.
¹⁷⁷ See n. 166 above on P.Oxy. 2435.30–2.
¹⁷⁸ Kearsley (2001), with Burrell (2009) 70 n. 7. Graeco-Italian integration at Ephesus: Kirbihler
(2016).
¹⁷⁹ Studies of the library of Celsus: Burrell (2009), esp. on the bilingual context; Sauron (2010).
¹⁸⁰ On possible Roman architectural influences on Celsus’ library see the bibliography gathered at
Burrell (2009) 82 n. 41.
¹⁸¹ On Flavian libraries at Rome see Tucci (2013). On twinned libraries in the Augustan age see
Horsfall (1993); cf. Hutchinson (2013) 12–13 on the conceptual and spatial separateness of Greek and
Latin literature.
¹⁸² Bilingual Augustan library: Suet. Iul. 44; Isid. Etym. 6.5.2; Suet. Aug. 29; P.Oxy. 2435.30–2
(quoted above, n. 166). Organization of libraries at Rome: White (1992); Horsfall (1993); Nicholls
(2010) on division by language; Houston (2014).
 27
which the Library of Celsus sits, a so-called αὐδειτώριον (transliterated from the
Latin auditorium) was installed later in the second century  (IEph. 3009).¹⁸³
Burrell suggests that this ‘was designed so that the stars of the Second Sophistic
could display their talents to crowds’.¹⁸⁴ There is, of course, no explicit evidence,
but perhaps poetic readings in Latin took place here. Libraries in Rome were
themselves used as venues for poetic recitationes (Hor. Epist. 2.2.92–105; Serm.
1.10.38), and Nicholls argues, on the basis of the monumental complex of Celsus
at Ephesus, that provincial libraries were designed to display their contents to
large numbers of people and that they were part of a wider function of cultural
display.¹⁸⁵ Sited as it is in a bilingual context and bicultural architectural plaza,
that Celsus’ library contained material in Latin is highly plausible.
The combination of contexts—festivals and libraries—implicates Ephesus and
Aphrodisias, cities that are known to have contained a strong Roman presence.
During the Flavian period, Ephesus twice earns the title of neokoros, marking it as
the city in charge of administering the imperial cult.¹⁸⁶ Ephesus is also the city
from which the novelist Xenophon ‘of Ephesus’ emanates, at least according to the
Suda (ξ 50).¹⁸⁷ Aphrodisias is relevant to the Greek novels given that Chariton
opens his novel by advertising his status as a citizen of that city (Χαρίτων
Ἀφροδισιεύς, 1.1.1).¹⁸⁸ Aphrodisias profited richly from its loyalty towards Rome
during the Mithridatic and Civil Wars of the first century , and prominently
advertised the esteem in which Rome held it.¹⁸⁹ The Julio-Claudian Sebasteion in
that city features a series of ethnē reliefs (depicting statuary personifications of
tribes conquered (probably) by Augustus) that are modelled directly on the
porticus ad nationes at Rome,¹⁹⁰ and the totality of the complex represents a visual
and monumental attestation to an awareness of the myth of Rome’s Trojan
origins: amongst other statue bases of the imperial family in the Propylon, one
is inscribed with ‘Aeneas, son of Anchises’ (IAph2007 9.35).¹⁹¹ A set of reliefs from
the second storey of the south building represent (consecutively) Anchises and
Aphrodite, the flight of Aeneas from Troy with Anchises on his shoulders holding
the Penates and Ascanius by his side (as pictured on the front cover of this book),
and Poseidon and Aeneas.¹⁹² The reliefs from the Sebasteion complex may even
have influenced elements of Chariton’s novel (see especially Chapter 3 on Trojan
¹⁸³ See Burrell (2009) 85, with n. 51. ¹⁸⁴ Burrell (2009) 86–7. ¹⁸⁵ Nicholls (2013).
¹⁸⁶ Friesen (1993) 50–74; Burrell (2004).
¹⁸⁷ See Whitmarsh (2011b) 28–9. Griffiths (1978) doubts Xenophon’s Ephesian origin.
¹⁸⁸ Jolowicz (2018a) collects epigraphic evidence from nearby Iasus and Mylasa that supports the
claim, though see Rohde (1914) 520 n. 2 for the possibility that Chariton’s name and city are
pseudonymous.
¹⁸⁹ Reynolds (1982) gathers the epigraphic evidence; see esp. docs. 1–13 for Aphrodisias’ role in the
Mithridatic and Civil Wars.
¹⁹⁰ Smith (1988), (2013) 86–121. ¹⁹¹ See Smith (2013) P-base 2; Smith (2013) D 4.
¹⁹² Smith (2013) D 3, D 4, D 5; as to the identity of the female figure to the left of Aeneas in D 4, this
is probably his mother, Aphrodite, although Strocka (2006) 309 also proposes Aeneas’ wife, Creusa.
The south building also features a relief of Trojan Ganymede: Smith (2013) C 31.
28       
themes), as well as the Wonders Beyond Thule of Antonius Diogenes, another

novelist of potentially Aphrodisian origin.¹⁹³
C. Julius Zoilus, the powerful freedman of Octavian, was responsible for the
monumentalization of Aphrodisias in the late first century . His role in the city
is still visible in the form of what is known as the Monument of Zoilus.¹⁹⁴ Bowie
suggests that the imperial librarian Ti. Julius Pappus (the comes of Tiberius and
supra bibliothecas omnes Augustorum, that is, commissioner of all libraries in
Rome, under Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius), epigraphically attested as ‘son of
Zoilus’, was either a son or grandson of Octavian’s freedman.¹⁹⁵ If so, Pappus
moved to Rome in the Julio-Claudian period to take up a position as a librarian,
where he would have been exposed to the full panoply of the Latin literary canon
and able to act as a ‘cultural broker’ once back in Aphrodisias. There is also
evidence, albeit isolated, of a library in Aphrodisias dated to the late first century
, donated by a certain Jason, son of Menodotus (IAph2007 12.1006). Given the
Roman leanings of the city, Latin material in an Aphrodisian library is likely (see
also p. 13 above on Silius Italicus), much as at the library of Celsus at Ephesus.
The epigraphic record preserves an account of only one Greek poet from
Aphrodisias, a certain C. Julius Longianus (IAph2007 12.27). The inscription in
which he is attested refers to public readings of his poetry at Halicarnassus, where
it was decreed that his poetic books be installed in the library. There is no way of
knowing what elements of Latin poetry, if any, he might have responded to, but
one might speculate, on the basis of his nomen, that the citizenship of his family
derives ultimately from the Julians and that he may therefore have treated Julian
themes; Aphrodisian Chariton’s treatment of Vergilian themes (elaborated in
Chapter 3) may be explicable in this context. If it is true that, as has been claimed,
Aphrodisias was a crucible of novelistic composition,¹⁹⁶ then that genre’s engage-
ment with Latin material is unsurprising.¹⁹⁷
0.6 Allusion and Intertextuality
A study such as this one requires explicit clarification of its intertextual method-
ologies. This is especially the case because the bodies of material I am comparing
differ in terms of both language (Greek and Latin) and form (prose and verse). In
the first instance, I am arguing a positivistic case; that is, my claim is that the
¹⁹³ Chariton: Jolowicz (2018b) 132; cf. Laplace (1980) on hints of the Trojan legend in Chariton.
Antonius Diogenes: Bowie (2017) 30–4. Antonius’ Aphrodisian origin: bibliography gathered at
Jolowicz (2018a) 595 n. 28.
¹⁹⁴ Smith (1993), with Reynolds (1982) docs. 33–40 on inscriptions relating to Zoilus.
¹⁹⁵ AÉ (1960) no. 26; Bowie (2013) 247–8; cf. Houston (2014) 234–5.
¹⁹⁶ Jolowicz (2018a) 595 n. 28 gathers bibliographic references.
¹⁹⁷ One should not rule out the possibility that authors like Chariton, from heavily Romanizing
cities like Aphrodisias, composed their novels while in Rome itself; cf. p. 258 n. 24, on Longus.
 29
Greek novelists read, in a sophisticated way, a number of Latin poets, and

intentionally involved these poets as part of their compositional practices. I am
not making the case for a ‘reception’ study, according to which a reader of the
Greek novel, who is also familiar with Latin poetry, can generate a range of
meanings and interpretations on the basis of their own (literary) experiences; of
course, while such a study would be eminently valuable (given that a less restrict-
ive model of intertextuality issues in a greater diversity of readings), the evidence
(at least as I take it) accommodates a positivistic argument.¹⁹⁸ There is also a
practical reason for positivism, insofar as the book is concerned with testing the
hypothesis that Greek authors of the first two centuries  were familiar with Latin
poetry, as much as it is with offering a series of literary readings of the Greek
novels. One ramification of this choice is that I hew more closely to the principles
of ‘allusion’ (conventionally defined as a property of the text, installed by the
author, which is then recognized by the reader) rather than ‘intertextuality’ (which
is more broadly defined as a frame of reference, literary or otherwise, that a reader
might bring to bear on their interpretation of a text).¹⁹⁹ Throughout, when I refer
to ‘allusion’, ‘intertextuality’, or related terms, I am referring to a function of
authorial intention (unless otherwise stated).
What, then, should be the standard of proof for one (Greek prose) text alluding
to another (Latin verse) text?²⁰⁰ How do we distinguish between a conventional
topos and a specific allusion? At what point does allusion become the only
acceptable hypothesis? An initial problem consists in the fact that the Latin
literary system is strongly based on that of the Greek, which perhaps makes
readers reluctant to credit Latin literature as an influence on Greek literature. It
would be easier if there were ‘foreignizing’ or otherwise incongruous elements in
the Greek that guaranteed an allusion as being to a Latin text, or if culturally
specific modes of allusion and intertextuality (such as that couched in the Roman
juristic language of theft)²⁰¹ were in view, but this is rarely the case in the Greek
novels (although see Sections 7.3 and 7.4 on Longus and theft).²⁰² While modern
cognitive approaches to allusion and intertextuality stress how single words can
trigger a recollection of a prior text or story,²⁰³ this mechanism does not neces-
sarily accommodate the process of translation between languages. The problem is
compounded by the fact that recognition of allusion tends to be more difficult for
¹⁹⁸ A succinct articulation of the methodology of ‘reception’ is Martindale (1993).

¹⁹⁹ In this I follow the recent practice of Whitton (2019) on prose intertextuality between Pliny and
Quintilian. Useful studies: Conte (1986), (2017) 47–51; Hinds (1998); Edmunds (2001); Baraz and van
den Berg (2013). On intertextuality more generally see Allen (2000).
²⁰⁰ Elements of this paragraph are indebted to the discussion of Whitton (2019) 43–6; Torres Guerra
(2012) 435 is likewise concerned with the criteria for detecting allusions to Ovid in later Greek poetry.
²⁰¹ See Peirano (2013).
²⁰² Feeney (2016) 74–82 discusses strategies of ‘foreignizing’ and ‘domesticating’ in connection with
early Roman poets’ adaptation of Greek models.
²⁰³ N. Phillips (2015) 70–2, cited by Lefteratou (2018) 16 n. 64.
30       
prose than for verse, whose formal features allow for a greater degree of manifest
recapitulation of sound and rhythm (although see pp. 217–18 for Achilles’
recapitulation of the acoustics of Vergilian verse).²⁰⁴
In the case of the Greek novels, indices of engagement with Latin comprise a
standard mixture of various elements: instances whose diction, syntax, phrasing,
as well as their idea, thought, or epigrammatic point make a direct connection
the most likely explanation; the cumulative weight of these instances within a
specific sequence and across the novel as a whole; and their interpretative
potential. The strength of these is redoubled if it can be shown that the item
in question is unparalleled in previous literature. Even if it can be, the item is still
exposed to the ‘lost common source’ or ‘availability bias’ argument, according to
which the loss of so much Greek material makes it difficult to make a deter-
minate claim of Latin originality. One defence against this argument is that it
stretches credulity that learned Greeks would be unaware of, and refuse to
engage with, the Latinized versions of the Greek sources they were adapting
(see the following paragraph).
I shall elaborate further in the Conclusion on how the individual novelists
feature within a possible typology of allusion to Latin poetry (pp. 327–8), but here
I would outline four broad categories as I see them. Category 1: standalone
allusions to Latin poetry (that is, ones whose contexts are devoid of obvious
interference from other Greek literary material). Category 2: a combinatorial
mode whereby allusions to Latin poetry occur within episodes that also manifest
Greek elements (for example, Longus’ combination of Aeneid 7 and Thucydides:
see Section 7.9); in this category, the Greek and Latin ‘source’ texts have no
(obvious) genetic relationship with one another. Category 3: a combinatorial
mode whereby a novelist alludes to a Greek original via a Latin intermediary
(for example, Achilles’ allusion to Sappho via Ovid’s ‘Sappho’: see pp. 170–2); in
this category, which can be termed ‘window reference’ or ‘double imitation’, the
Greek and Latin ‘source’ texts are clearly in a genetic relationship with one
another and are recognized as such by the novelist.²⁰⁵ Category 4: a combinatorial
mode whereby a novelist utilizes Greek and Latin versions of the same story (for
example, Achilles’ combination of the treatments of Hippolytus’ death in
Euripides, Ovid, and Seneca in his account of Charicles’ death: see Section 6.2).
The allusions I explore in the Greek novels also adhere to the principles of
imitatio and aemulatio, according to which the engagement is, on the one hand,
²⁰⁴ On these issues see Conte (1986) 40–52; Marchesi (2013); though see Tac. Dial. 20.5 for the
poeticus decor of prose in the imperial period; cf. Hutchinson (2018) on ‘rhythmic prose’ in Plutarch,
also containing chapters on Chariton and Achilles Tatius.
²⁰⁵ On the concepts of ‘double imitation’ and ‘window reference’ see, respectively, Thomas (1986)
188; McKeown (1987) 37–45. The ‘combinatorial’ mode of allusion detected by Hardie (1990), whereby
Flavian epicists combine two or more passages from the Aeneid as a type of literary criticism, is also
relevant.
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nai talonpoikaisen. Niinkuin se sama Piessa-raukan eukkokin, joka
sittemmin joutui vaimoksi Inarin papille.
— Entäs Ponnin Sohja? toimesi Ampru. Muistihan isä Tahvokin,

että
Ponnin Sohja keikkui emäntänä Könkään pappilassa sen Junnu-
papin aikana?
Kyllähän Tahvo-vaari sen muisti, vaikka olikin hiukan epäuskoinen

Muurmanneihin nähden. He olivat hänen mielestään liiaksi kulun
päällä olevia… sellaisia ajelehtijoita, ettei hän oikein tiennyt. Mutta…
saattoi hyvinkin… ei hän halunnut vastaankaan panna, vaikka
toisinaan vahvasti epäilikin.
— Mikäs siinä, toimesi Ampru. — Kyllä Sapina rouvaksi kelpaa…

varallakin yhtä hyvin kuin Ponnin Sohjakin.
Sabina istui takan kupeella pimennossa ja kehräsi. Häntä hiukan

kiusasi omaisten vapaa juttelu. Isä varsinkin oli sellainen…
kummallinen. Otti kaikki niin verisen vakavasti… vaikka tässä
tapauksessahan tuon nyt sai ottaakin. Kyllä hänkin luotti Jonneen.
Ettäkö ylpeäksi —? Sabina pysäytti rukkinsa ja kuulosti. - Mitä se

isä nyt taas oikein puhui? — Niin… tässä vain tuli mielheen, että kun
sie tietysti reissaat sinne Ristiaaniin, kuninkhaan kaupunkhiin, ja saat
nähhä kaiken sen komeuen, tulet ehkä ylpeäksi etkä enää muista
köyhiä vanhempiasi.
Pyh! Isä taas joutavia. Minne Ristiaaniin se hän… Tännehän

Jonne asettuisi heidän naapurikseen. Uutistalokas hänestä tulisi,
korvenraivaaja ja karhunkaataja. Ei hän Ristiaaneista välittänyt.
Mutta nyt rupesi isä Ampru panemaan vastaan oikein voimainsa
takaa. Hän oli kerran saanut ajatuksesta kiinni eikä halunnut sitä
noin vain jättää. Muurmannin Jonne oli herra, kouluja käynyt ja puhui
kahta kieltä. Vahinko olisi sellaisia lahjoja korpeen haudata. Niiden
piti joutua käytäntöön. Ei hän, Ampru, hyväksynyt koko
uutistalohommaa. Se kuului heille, oppimattomille, tämä metsässä
möyriminen. Herra oli herra ja hänen piti hankkia herran paikka. Tiesi
vaikka vielä ministeerinä pohottaisi Muurmannin Jonne. Sabinan
täytyi väkistenkin hymyillä. Olihan hänkin joskus sellaista ajatellut,
vaikka olikin sitten lyönyt sen mahdottomaksi. Mutta hiveli sentään
hänen lapsenomaista sieluaan kuulla isän tuollaisia juttelevan.
Nyt otti setä Juhani sananvuoron. Hän oli kerran lukenut

muutamasta työmiehestä, josta tuli ministeeri. Missä se nyt
tapahtuikaan… siellä jossakin Eklannin maassa. Ja hän oli sentään
tavallinen työmies. Oli kannellut jauhosäkkejä laivahaminassa selkä
jauhossa. Mutta sitten kun pääsi kuninkaan lähimmäksi mieheksi, löi
pitkän takin selkäänsä ja käyttäysi kuin herra. Koska raa'asta
runtotyömiehestä saattoi tulla ministeeri, miksei sitten Jonnesta,
jonka äitikin oli kuulemma ollut Ruijan hienointa aatelia —
opsysmannin tytär Vesisaaresta.
Setä Juhani oli oikeassa. Peijakas — oli sitä tuota tiedon roskaa
Lunnasjärvelläkin! Se jos olisi tuo Juhani saanut kouluja käydä, olisi
se pappi taikka rohvessoori.
Juhani setä pyyhkäisi pitkää partaansa. Olihan sitä elämän

varrella tullut opituksi yhtä ja toista. Harva se taisikin niin tarkkaan
präntätyn käyttää kuin hän, joka luki yksin uistinpaketin kuoretkin.
Kerrankin oli sattunut käteen eklanninkielinen lappu. Senkin hän oli
lukenut, vaikkei ollutkaan ymmärtänyt muuta kuin »Lonton.» Se
kuului olevan sen niminen kaupunki… jossakin siellä Tanskan
takana.
Näin kuluivat talvi-illat takkavalkean ääressä. Sabinasta ja häntä

odottavasta onnesta lähtivät puheet matkaan, kierrellen kaiken
maailman meret ja maat ja päätyen aina lopuksi Sabinaan ja hänen
onneensa. Se oli kuin maan pyörintää auringon ympäri. Niin —
siitäkin oli keskusteltu muutamana iltana. Sitä pani Ampru ensin
jyrkästi vastaan. Mutta kun hän sai kuulla, että Muurmannin Jonne
oli sen kerran Tunturimajalla juurta jaksaen selittänyt, niin täytyi
Amprun uskoa. Hollannin juusto oli ollut maapallona ja kattolamppu
aurinkona. Sen ympäri oli Jonne kuljettanut juustoa, näyttäen, mille
puolen maapalloa päivä kulloinkin paistoi. Se oli ollut hyvin järkeen
pystyvä asia.
Mutta — se rautatie jäi sittenkin tulematta ja se pakkasi hiukan

harmittamaan. Isä Ampru innostui vanhaan unelmaansa. Olisi se nyt
ollut mukavaa Lunnasjärveltäkin piipahtaa Sabinaa katsomaan.
— Ei kaikki hyvät yhellä kertaa, huomautti Karuliina.
Eipä ei… mutta olisi se nyt ollut tavattoman lystiä rautahevosella

jyryyttää. Ei muuta kuin istua selkäkenossa ja antaa huhkia vain.
Kyllä kruunun voima veti.
Näin he keskustelivat nuo erämaan hurskaat sielut ja aina palasi

keskustelu Sabinaan ja hänen onneensa.
Oliko tullut kirjettä vieläkään?
Ei ollut tullut ja sehän juuri Sabinaa huolestutti. Liekö mennyt

perille sekään ensimmäinen kirje?
Ojah, perille oli mennyt. Se kun vain Jonne ei muuten joutanut
kirjoittamaan. Sillä oli lukuja paljon.
Mutta — tiesikö kukaan, minne ukko Muurmanni oli hävinnyt?

Hänestä ei oltu kuultu pitkään aikaan. Oliko setä Juhani kuullut?
Olihan hän jotakin. Ristiaanissa kuului viime tietojen mukaan

oleskelleen kuningasta puhuttelemassa. Aikoi perustaa oikean
rautavalimon jonnekin Ruijan rantaan.
Siltä äijältä ne eivät neuvot loppuneet. Jos yhdessä maassa tie

nousi pystyyn, niin aloitapas toisessa. Ja rahoja se aina sai. Liekö
vielä Jonnen äidin perintöön koskenut.
Eihän äijällä ollut siihen oikeuttakaan. Siitähän kuului olevan oikein

kirjakin. Ei ollut Jonne koskaan kertonut, kuinka suuri summa oli?
Ei ollut Sabinakaan kuullut; ei ollut tullut kysytyksi. Mutta kaipa sitä

oli jonkin verran, koskapa Jonne oli kerran kertonut, että sillä oli
turvattu tulevaisuus.
Tulevaisuus! Se sana soinnahti kauniilta lunnasjärveläisten

korvissa.
Kaipa Sabina hiukan avustaisi heitäkin, kun kerran naimisiin joutuisi?
Sabina ei osannut siihen mitään sanoa. Ei hän ollut sitä ajatellut.

Tietysti hän avustaisi, jos kerran jotakin saisi.
— Saisi edes kerran oikeaa hapriikin lankaa, tuumaili äiti Karuliina.

—
Se oli kuulemma niin liukasta kutoa.
Kyllä kotikehruulanka oli aina parempaa, arveli Ampru. Mutta,
kunhan saisi oikean äkeen, jolla jyräisi näitä kivikkopeltoja. Se olisi
jotakin!
Jokaisella oli joku toivomus. Setä Juhani toivoi sorvipenkkiä.

Hänestä oli sorvaaminen aina näyttänyt erikoisen hupaisalta työltä.
Hän oli kerran Könkäällä katsellut, kuinka nikkari sorvasi
sängyntolppaa. Niin syntyi koivupökkelöstä ruusattu sängynjalka,
että ihan ihme. Mitäs ne lapsukaiset toivoivat? Yksi toivoi rusinoita,
toinen siirappivoileipää. Ampru oli kerran tuonut jouluksi puoli litraa
siirappia Siosjärveltä. Siitä oli tehty siirappivoileipiä koko väelle. —
Vähäänpä sie tyytyisit. Sabina hymähti. Pikku Anni oli viisas. Hän ei
havitellut liikoja. Vaikka — kyllä kai nyt Jonne joskus antaisi sen
verran, että saisi sisarilleen ostaa jonkun vaatekappaleen.
Vaatteista tahtoikin Amprun perheessä puute olla. Muuta oli

sittenkin… kutakuinkin. Vaate oli kallista. Nytkin oli pikku Annilla
Sabinan vanha röijy. Hihat oli kääritty laskoksille, jotta pikku kädet
paremmin pääsisivät näkyviin.
Mistä se hänkin hääleningin saisi? Eihän nyt kehdannut

vanhoissa, kuluneissa ketineissä Jonnen rinnalla vihillä seistä.
Mutta kyllä kai Jumala siitäkin huolen piti.
Kiitollisuus valtasi Sabinan mielen. Asiat olivat sentään

paremmalla kannalla kuin alussa oli uskaltanut toivoakaan. Jonne ei
ollutkaan hyljännyt häntä, vaikka hän niin oli luullut.
Sitä hän vain suri hiljakseen, että hän oli rumentunut. Entinen
kukkea ihonväri oli kadonnut ja sijaan astunut kalvakkuus. Hän
katseli muotoaan Suomen-Huotarin lahjoittamasta peilistä ja silloin
hän toisinaan raskaasti huokasi….
Epäilyskin kohotti päätään. Miksi ei Jonne kirjoittanut? Oliko niin,

ettei hän joutanu?
Iltahetkinä kun omaiset nukkuivat lueskeli Sabina Jonnen entisiä

kirjeitä. Muuan lause on erikoisesti painunut mieleen. Jonne oli
kirjoittanut »Mie toivoisin, että elämä kukkisi meille kuin verenpisara
kotipirttisi ikkunalla.»
Huokaus pusertautui Sabinan rinnasta. Sitä hänkin toivoi. Mutta

elämä tuntui toisinaan niin toivottoman raskaalta. Tämä odotus,
odotus.
Se oli pitkä kun iäisyys.
Amprun väki rupeaa laittautumaan levolle Sabina siirtää rukkinsa

syrjään. Taas oli kulunut yksi päivä ja kevät oli askelta lähempänä. Ei
ollut syytä heittäytyä huolten valtaan. Jonne saapuisi kuin
kuninkaanpoika noutamaan Kunigundaa, joka tosin nukkui lattialla,
mutta sittenkin pystyi uneksimaan kuin saduissa.
Sabina nukkuu ja näkee unta Jonnesta ja Ristiaanista. He kulkevat

Ristiaanin katuja ja kaikki ihmiset katsovat heitä. Kuningaskin tulee
vastaan ja pysäyttää Jonnen. »No, Muurmanni, hyvinkös malmia
löytyy?» »Hyvinpä löytyy, herra kuningas… löytyypä niinkin ja aina
vähän muutakin.» Jonne osoittaa Sabinaa ja jatkaa: »Tämänkin mie
olen löytänyt Lapista.» Kuningas katselee Sabinaa tutkivasti ja
sanoo viimein: »Sillä on pisamia kasvoissa ja se näyttää hiukan
kalvakalta.» »Niin näyttää, herra kuningas, mutta kylläpähän siitä
vuonkuu… kevätpuolheen…» »Aivan oikein, Muurmanni,
kevätpuolheen. Mutta — hoia sie sitä hyvin, jotta punaruusut jälleen
kukkisit sen poskilla.» Jonne kumartaa kohteliaasti ja kuningas
taputtaa Sabinaa olalle…
XIII.
Katajan Matti on saanut saunansa valmiiksi aikoja sitten. Hän on

kylpenyt säännöllisesti joka lauantai ja tyytyväinen hän on ollut. Nyt
ahertaa hän taas uutisrakennuksensa kimpussa; hän mielisi saada
sen valmiiksi mikkeliksi.
Talvi on mennyt, sitä seurannut kevät ja kesä ovat takanapäin. On

taas käsissä syksy.
Katajan Matti istuu hajareisin rakennuksensa katolla, kiinnittäen

paikoilleen harjalautaa. Hän on onnellinen. Pirtin muuri on muurattu.
Kuusi-Tuomas väylän varrelta on ollut hänellä muurmestarina ja itse
hän on autellut, minkä on kerinnyt. Nyt oli vielä eteiseen saatava ovi
ja ikkunat. Silloinpa olisikin pirtti valmis.
Katajan Matti antaa vasaran hetkeksi levätä ja vaipuu

katselemaan edessään leviävää maisemaa. Kaamaslaki kohoaa
mahtavana suoraan pohjoisessa. Sen huippu on kuuran peitossa ja
alempana tunturin rinteellä muuttaa koivunlehti väriään. Keltaista ja
punaista, tummempaa ja vaaleampaa näkyy joka suunnalta, mihin
vain hänen katseensa kääntyy. Metsät ympärillä ovat noita värejä
ihan kirjavanaan. Ilma on kuulakas ja kirkas. Viime yönä on käynyt
halla.
Tapahtuu erämaassakin jotakin. Ei yksin tämä halla, harmaja

vieras kyläile mailla. Lentelee etelän lintukin, se haikaraksi mainittu,
toisinaan yli Kiiluvaistunturin ja pudottaa tuomisensa lakeistorvesta
sisään.
Viime huhtikuussa se oli saapunut jo ennen variksen tuloa ja

tuonut
Sabinalle — pojan.
Kajahtaa pari, kolme vasaran iskua. Katajan Matti on lyönyt naulan

harjalautaan. Siinäpä se olikin tarpeeseen; puri laudansyrjän tiukasti
pärekerrokseen kiinni.
Kummat tunteet vellovat Katajan Matin povessa. Ei hän vihainen

ole, kaukana siitä. Hänen piti vain kopauttaa naula tuohon paikkaan.
Muuten olisi harjalauta jäänyt irvistämään.
Tapahtuu erämaassakin jotakin… tapahtuu… Sellainenkin

ihmeellinen asia, että Katajan Matti, hiljainen mies, jonka silmissä
aina asustaa kostea kiilto, rakastaa Lunnasjärven Sabinaa — siitä
huolimatta, että tämä on saanut toiselle miehelle lapsen.
Ei ole Katajan Matti koskaan Sabinalle mitään puhunut, ei edes

viitannut sinnepäinkään. Hän on niin omituinen; hän puhelee vain
itsekseen. Rapatessaan syvennystä muurin kupeeseen on hän
sanonut puoliääneen: »Siinäpä on Sapinan kirnulle paikka», ja
rakennellessaan pirtin ulkoportaita: »Askellauat on laitettava leveät,
jottei Sapinan jalka luiskaha hänen navetasta tulleshaan maitokiulun
kanssa.»
Niin — navettakin oli valmis. Yksin lypsyjakkarankin hän oli tehnyt.
Sitäkin rustatessaan hän oli ajatellut Sabinaa.
Katajan Matti ei yhtään epäile, ettei hän Sabinaa saisi. Se ei johdu

hänen mieleensäkään. Hänestä se on päivänselvä asia. Kun hän
kerran Sabinaa rakastaa ja kun ei se Malmi-Muurmannin poikakaan
tullut, on selvä, että Sabina suostuu häneen.
Ei hän alunpitäenkään ollut uskonut, että Malmi-Muurmannin

pojassa olisi ollut sanansa pitäjää. Hän oli tutkinut sen miehen.
Olihan hän siksi monta kertaa Muurmannin pojan taakkoja kantanut
ja melkein joka kerta tämä oli tinkinyt sopimuksesta.
Samalla tavalla se oli tietysti tinkinyt Sabinankin asiassa.
Katajan Matti tarttuu vasaraansa ja jatkaa työtään. Vasaran iskut

kajahtelevat kuulakassa syysilmassa. Niissä soi voima ja rehti,
päättäväinen aikomus. Hän, Katajan Matti, ei Sabinaa pettäisi. Hän
hoitaisi hänet ja hänen lapsensa…
Se pisti hiukan Matin sydäntä, että Sabinan pojan nimi oli Jonne.
Miksi piti vielä tuon petturin nimi pojalle antaa? Eikö nyt muuta nimeä
oltu keksitty?
Mutta — sehän oli Malmi-Muurmannin pojanpoika. Kaipa sille oli

sitten ollut annettava isänsä nimi.
Katajan Matti tyytyi siihenkin. Mitäpä se häneen kuului. Pääasia,

että hän ottaisi Sabinan ja pitäisi hänestä hellää huolta.
Iltapäivällä oli Katajan Matti päättänyt pistäytyä Amprun pirtissä.

Silloin hän puhuisi asiansa.
*****
Tämä syksy erosi suuresti edellisestä. Silloin oli vielä toivottu, nyt
ei enää.
Muurmannin Jonne ei ollut tullutkaan.
Kuinka hartaasti Sabina oli häntä odottanut! Joka ilta viime

kesäkuussa hän oli kävellyt Jonnea vastaan. Sieltä… Kaamaslaen
takaa hänen piti tulla, hänen sydämensä valitun. Hän oli odottanut
häntä jokaisessa tienkäänteessä. Mutta — Jonnea ei ollut kuulunut.
Kerran — muutamana pyhänä hän oli kulkenut Tunturimajalle

saakka. Siellä oli ollut kuollutta ja liikkumatonta — paksut
rautakanget ovissa ja luukut ikkunoissa. Vain tuuli oli vaisusti
puhallellut puiden latvoissa ja yksinäinen orava oli katsellut häntä
kuusen oksalta…
Hän oli palannut sydän tuskaa täynnä, väsyneenä ja onnettomana.

Näinkö
Jonne hänet hylkäsi —?
Kotona hän oli hiukan virkistynyt. Siellä potki kehdossa pieni

pulleasäärinen poika. Se hymyili hänelle. Sabina nosti lapsen
syliinsä, painoi sitä rintaansa vasten ja nyt vasta heltisivät
vapauttavat kyyneleet hänen silmistänsä.
— On sitä surkeutta kerraksheen! pauhasi Ampru. Hän oli

muuttunut häijyksi ja kärtyisäksi sen jälkeen kuin toivo Muurmannin
pojan paluusta oli sammunut.
— Kaikkia rutkaleita niitä ihmisinä kohellaankin! On sitäkin…

kuvatusta tässä kahvilla helssattu senkin seittemät kerrat ja tuon se
nyt teki!… Ja kaikhiin maankulkureihin se siekin, Sapina, luotat.
Hyvä Isä sentään! Luottaneethan he olivat kaikki, isä etupäässä.
Mitä? Ampru kiivastui. Hänkö luottanut? Se oli valhe — musta

valhe!
Amprua hävetti ja suututti, että hänkin oli mokomaan luottanut.

Mutta hän ei halunnut sitä tunnustaa eikä siitä saanut puhua —
ainakaan hänen kuultensa.
Mutta isähän oli kuvitellut kuninkaat ja kaikki virkakunnat tämän

asian yhteyteen. Mitäs nyt oikeaa asiaa kieltää.
Silloin Ampru lopullisesti suuttui. Hän sieppasi kirveen, työntyi

rantteelle ja nyt saivat rangat tuntea hänen vihansa voimaa.
— Älä sie isää kiusaa, rauhoitteli Karuliina-äiti. — Yhenkaltaisessa

erhetyksessä tässä on eletty kaikin.
Niin — totta puhui Karuliina… juuri samankaltaisessa. Hänkin,

setä
Juhani, oli ihan todesta luottanut Muurmannin poikaan.
Niin — setä Juhani ja äiti ymmärsivät ottaa asian rauhallisesti. He

tyytyivät kohtaloon. Isä ja ukki olivat katkeroituneita, viimemainittu
varsinkin. Sabina ihan pelkäsi häntä. Tuuheiden kulmakarvojensa
alta tuijotteli vanhus häntä pahaenteisesti. Hän ei puhunut mitään,
mutta kun hän tavantakaa pudisteli päätään ja huokasi syvään,
tuntui Sabinasta toisinaan oikein kamalalta.
Näkikö ukki mitään? Hänhän oli oikeastaan tietäjä. Moni

kopsalainen oli käynyt häneltä neuvoa kysymässä ja aina oli vanhus
auttanut. Mutta — nyt saattoi hän toisinaan puhua sellaisia
kummallisia sanoja, että ihan selkäpiitä karmi niitä kuunnellessa.
— Kummempia vielä kuulhaan, sanoi hän kerrankin. — Mie en

tieä, mitä se on, mutta risthiin lentelevät koivuvarvut, kun luutia
tehen.
Karuliina hätääntyi.
— Älkää nyt suotta peloitelko tyärriepua. Eikö sillä ole jo

tarpheeksi kärsimistä.
Ukki ei vastannut mitään, istui vain kyyryssä ja pudisteli päätään.

Toisen kerran hän sanoi:
— Kun omasta verestä nousee paha, on sitä vasthaan voimaton.
Sabina kuunteli ukin puheita pelko ja vavistus sydämessä. Mitä —

kuolemaako se ennusti — ukki? Ei kai äidin pikku poju vain kuolisi?
Ei, ei, ukki vain omiaan höpsi. Se oli taas sillä päällä. Kyllä Jumala
taivaastaan varjelisi heitä.
Sabina istui mietteissään ja tuuditteli lasta. Kaikenlaisia ajatuksia

kulki hänen päässään. Mikä oli tuleva hänen pojastaan kerran?
Herrako vai talonpoika? Sillä oli — pikku Jonnella kaikki isänsä
tuntomerkit: kaunis, kaareva nenä, siromuotoinen suu ja musta
tukka. Ainoastaan silmät olivat äidin: — ne olivat haalakat.
*****
Illalla tuli Katajan Matti. Hän oli pukeutunut pyhävaatteisiin ja

kellonperät riippuivat rentoina rinnalla. Ne olivat hiukan
omituisemmat kellonperät kuin tavallisesti. Ne olivat
karhunhampaista tehdyt. Matin isä oli ollut kuulu karhunkaataja ja
hän oli kerran Haaparannalla käydessään teettänyt kellonperät
karhunhampaista. Mihinkäs Matti nyt aikoi, kun oli noin
sonnustautunut?
Isä Ampru silmäili tutkivasti Mattia, aivan kuin aavistaen tämän

asian. Olisipa toki hyvä, jos Matti korjaisi tyttären tästä pois.
Jaloissahan tuo oli, kun ei joutanut talon töihinkään. Lapsi vei kaiken
ajan.
Hän oli kerran ennen toivonut samaa. Silloin oli Sabina vielä tyttö.
Oli tullut sitten sellainen aika, jolloin hän oli nauranut aikaisemmille
kuvitteluilleen. Sabinako Matin vaimoksi? Heh! Muurmannin poika oli
ilmestynyt näyttämölle ja lyönyt Matin laudalta kuin kuivan tallukan.
Nyt hän taas taipui aikaisempiin ajatuksiinsa.
Pantiin kahvipannu tulelle. Matti teki niin juhlallisen vaikutuksen,

että kahvipannu lensi lieteen kuin itsestään.
— Kopsaanko aiot? kysäisi Ampru äkkiä.
Matti kaiveli piippuaan. Hänen oli hiukan vaikea päästä alkuun.

Vaikka ei hän yhtään peljännyt. Hänellä oli sellainen omituinen
tunne, ettei epäonnistuminen tullut kysymykseenkään. Yhtäkaikki
mietitytti, miten asian aloittaisi.
— En.
— No… mitäs sie nyt noin — tällissä? Harjakaisiako aiot pitää?
Matti silmäsi Sabinaa kuin salaa. Ahaa, jo pääsi Ampru

varmuuteen.
Tytärtä se meinasi.
Sabina oli myös huomannut Matin silmäyksen. Sama kostealta
kiiltelevä katse kuin ennenkin. Hän muisti kesäyön Nooakin arkin
maassa. Silloin oli Matti tuonut hänet kotiin. Samoin syysillan kosken
niskassa. Silloinkin oli Matti tuonut hänet kotiin.
Tulisiko hän nyt noutamaan häntä kolmannen kerran?
Äiti Karuliina pesi kuppeja pöydän päässä. Hänkin oli miettiväinen.

Hiljainen myhäily leikki hänen huulillaan. Kihlajaisetko tässä
tulivatkin?
Hän oli ajatellut toisenlaisia kihlajaisia. Tuossa pöydän päässä,

kellon alla, istuisi Muurmannin Jonne selkä kenossa, Ruijan leikkoja
poltellen. Ja hän, Karuliina, kaataisi sille kahvia kuppiin käden hiukan
vavahdellessa.
Mutta — vavahtelemaan pakkasi käsi nytkin — vaikka hän oli

vasta kuppeja pesemässä. Vaikuttiko siihen epävarmuus Matin
onnistumisesta?
— Sinulla alkaa talo olla valmis?
Ampru istui kahareisin penkillä ja leikkasi tupakkaa kukkaroonsa.
— Mikkeliksi pääsen asumhaan… vakituisesti.
Ampru innostui. Hän oli herkkä innostumaan.
— Niin se mies rytkää! Laittaa talon kylmhään mettään ja ihan

yksin.
— Onhan sitä nyt aina väliin apuakin ollut… muurarikin ja

muitakin… silloin tällöin.
— No joo… mutta vähän sie olet sittenkin muien apua tarvinnut.
Onhan tässä joku hirsi kiskotettu miehissä ylös, mutta sittenkin…
Kyllähän Katajan Matti sen kiitollisena myönsi, että auliisti oli

Amprukin apua tarjonnut, silloinkuin hän oli tarvinnut.
— Etkä sie sekhaantunut sen Malmi-Muurmanninkhaan homhiin,

vaikka oli toisinhaan hyvätkin tienat tarjolla.
Eihän hän isosti. Jonkun taakan oli nakannut Kopsaan. Siinä

kaikki.
Matti poltteli ja mietti. Laatuunkäypä mies tämä Ampru. Hyvän

appiukon siitä saisi.
Nyt oli Karoliinalla kahvi valmiina. Hän kaasi kuppiin ja kehoitti

Mattia ottamaan.
Matti siirtyi pöydän päähän. Hän kulki pikku pojan kehdon päitse.
Siinä nukkui Muurmannin Jonnen poika. Se auttoi asiaa alkuun.
— Jaa… sinulla se on jo valmis poikakin, sanoi hän hymyillen.
Sabina painoi päänsä alas. Hän ei vastannut mitään.
— Mie tässä arvelin, että etköhän sie nyt tarvitseisi sille isää, kun
ei tullut se vasittu…
Sabina punehtui. Kyllä hän ymmärsi Matin tarkoituksen, mutta ei

nytkään vastannut mitään.
— Mie tässä olisin… niinkuin emäntää vailla ja ajattelin sinua

kysyä…
Nyt ei Ampru enää jaksanut itseään hillitä. Hän lausui:
— Kuulepas, Sapina, Matti pyytää sinua vaimokseen.
Suuret kyyneleet rupesivat vierimään Sabinan poskia pitkin.

Minkävuoksi hän itki? Siksikö, ettei tuo pöydän päässä istuva mies
ollut Muurmannin Jonne, ja että hänen nyt ehkä piti vastata
kieltävästi? Vai siksikö, että tuo mies oli Katajan Matti, jolle ehkä
sittenkin oli vastattava myöntävästi? Ei Sabina sitä itsekään tiennyt.
— Älä sie turhia itke, Sapina. Sinunhan pitäisi päinvastoin iloita,

että Matti niin rehellisesti pyytää sinua vaimokseen.
Eihän Sabina itsekään tiennyt, oliko se iloa vai surua. Pääasia

vain, ettei hän tahtonut kieltääkään. Hän ei puhunut mitään.
— Mie otaksun siis, ettei sinulla ole asiaa vasthaan.
— Mutta… jos Jonne palaisi, sai hän lopulta sanotuksi.
— Ei palaa, huokasi äiti ja samaa sanoi setä Juhanikin.
— Huihai! toimesi Ampru. — Vai että palaisi! Johan nyt, kun

heinäkuun alussa tuli jo vuosi eikä ole ees kirjoittanut.
Isän puhe ei Sabinaan isosti vaikuttanut. Hän puhui kuin tuuleen.

Toista oli äidin ja setä Juhanin. Kun he kerran olivat toivonsa
menettäneet, oli kai turhaa enää hänenkään rimpuilla vastaan.
Hän ei vastannut mitään, katsahti vain hiukan ujosti Mattiin ja

punoi palmikkonsa päätä.
Matti luki kuin kirjasta. Nuo olivat pettämättömät myöntymyksen

merkit.
Hän virkkoi:
— Sitten lähen ensi viikolla kuulutusta ottamhaan.
Sabina ei äännähdäkään. Asia on päätetty.
Niin lähtee Katajan Matti kahvit juotuaan ja ohjaa askelensa

uutisrakennukselleen. Hän on tyytyväinen ja hyräilee laulunpätkää.
Ei hän monta sanaa ollut Sabinan kanssa vaihtanut, mutta mitäpä
tarvittiinkaan…
Katajan Matti panee nukkumaan pirttinsä lattialle. Hänen

toiveensa on täyttynyt. Tässä pirtissä askartelisi Lunnasjärven
Sabina kuukauden päästä… Mutta kehto hänen piti tehdä aivan ensi
tilassa. Tietysti ei Ampru halunnut luovuttaa omaansa; ehkä itsekin
vielä tarvitseisi…
Mutta ei hätää. Hänellä oli kuivia lautoja. Niistä hän kyllä pian
kehdon kaputtelisi kokoon. Laittaisi oikein ruusatut jalat… sellaiset
kiperänokkaiset. Siinäpä oli Sabinan sitten hyvä lastansa keinutella.
Katajan Matti nukkuu onnellisena nähden unta Sabinasta.
Mutta Amprun pirtissä lattialla lepää Lunnasjärven Sabina avoimin

silmin, katsellen tuikkivaa iltatähteä.
Hänestä se on niin lohduttoman kaukana.

XIV.
Katajan Matin pirtissä puuhailee Lunnasjärven Sabina. Hän on nyt

Matin vaimo.
Viikko sitten he olivat käyneet Siosjärvellä. Siosjärven rovasti on

heidät vihkinyt ja samalla vahvistanut pikku Jonnen kasteen. Matin
nimiin se oli ristitty; niin he olivat sopineet. Vanha rovasti oli
lempeästi nuhdellut heitä; — ei pitäisi rikkoa Luojan järjestystä.
Sabina oli kuunnellut vaieten punaiset läikät poskillaan. Matti oli
lakkiaan pyöritellen vastaillut yksikantaan: »Niin … niinhän se…»
He olivat astuneet Kopsasta peräkanaa, Sabina edellä lasta

komsiossa kantaen ja Matti perässä. Kopsan kievaritalossa oli
tarjottu kahvit ja isäntä oli puhellut entiseen tapaansa: »No…
mitenkä se nyt tämä kummilapsi jaksaa?» »Ja poikakin sillä jo on!»
»No minkäs nimen pani Siosjärven pappi?»
Matti oli selittänyt, että Jonnehan oli… pojan ressun nimi..
»Vai Jonne.» »Korheien nimien perhään tet olette siellä

Lunnasjärvellä.» »Eikös se Muurmannin poikakin ollut Jonne?»
»Olihan se», oli Matti vastannut… »Jonnehan se oli se
Muurmannin poikakin.» »Sille tuo lie kaimaksi ristitty… tämäkin
Jonne…» »Se kun on sellainen… soma nimi…»
»Sie taiat omistellakin pojan ittellesti?» oli Kopsan isäntä veistellyt.

»Eikös se Muurmannin poika olekhaan tämän Jonnen isä?»
Eikö mitä. Kyllä se oli hänen poikansa.
Sitä sanoessaan oli Matti vahvasti punastunut, paljon enemmän

kuin Siosjärven papin edessä. Hän ei tavallisesti valehdellut, mutta
nyt oli täytynyt sekin synti tehdä.
Mitäpäs siitä, kun hän kerran Sabinaa rakasti. Rakkaushan peitti

syntien paljouden… niin Sabinaan kuin häneenkin nähden.
Sabina ei ollut Kopsassa juuri monta sanaa sanonut. Olihan vain

kiittänyt kahvista ja esittänyt: »Emmekhään jo lähe, Matti?»
Eikä Matilla ollut sitä vastaan ollut. Sopi lähteäkin. Hän oli
sellainen peräänantavainen mies. Matkalla ei oltu monta sanaa
puhuttu. Hirvijängän laidassa oli istahdettu levähtämään. Sabina oli
syöttänyt lasta.
»Tähän saakka oli hyvin kuulunut Muurmannin herran ammutus.»
Sabina sen oli sanonut ja Mattikin oli innostunut. Oli se muutamilla

ilmoilla kuulunut aina Kopsaan saakka. Hän oli kerran… sen pojan
taakkoja kantaessaan Kopsan kievarin pihalla kuunnellut ja selvästi
oli kuulunut. Mutta — silloin oli puhaltanutkin pohjoisesta.
Sabina oli luonut Mattiin kiitollisen katseen. Matin sydän oli

lämmennyt. Olihan hauskaa, että edes joku asia kiinnitti Sabinan

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Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek

Novels Daniel Jolowicz

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours: Sourcebook

Latin Grammarians on the Latin Accent: The

Staging the Sacred: Performance in Late Ancient

Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity Felix

Women in Contemporary Latin American Novels:

Ancient and Medieval Thought on Greek Enclitics

Ancient and Medieval Thought on Greek Enclitics

Eliminativism in Ancient Philosophy - Greek and

OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS

Latin Poetry in the

In writing this monograph, which is a drastically revised, rethought, and expanded

Brynja Thorgeirsdottir, Stephen Trzaskoma, and Krešimir Vuković. I would also

As this volume was going to press, we celebrated the arrival of Callirhoë. It is

Note on Editions and Translations ix

4.5 The Ethics of Consent 145

Works Cited 331

Note on Editions and Translations

Bernabé P. Bernabé (ed.) (1987) Poetarum epicorum Graecorum testimonia

Foerster R. Foerster (ed.) (1903–27) Libanius: Opera (Leipzig).

Pf. R. Pfeiffer (ed.) (1949) Callimachus: The Works. Vol. 1: Fragments

0.1 Status Quaestionis and Greek Biculturality

Ξένωνι ἐτ(ῶν) [ . . . ] καὶ Πρείμωι ἐτ(ῶν) ε’ τοῖς τέκνοις

2       

hexameter quatrain speaks to an interest in poetic Latin (perhaps by way of

Vergilian oeuvre (especially the Eclogues and Aeneid).⁵ Xenophon of Ephesus’

4       

attracted any formalized literary criticism or theory in antiquity;¹⁴ but what is

6       

8       

⁴¹ Fuchs (1938); Bowie (1970); Swain (1996), esp. 17–64.

10       

which is relevant to my argument that, in the eyes of learned Greeks, Latin

12       

Cultural brokerage assumes the mediating presence of individuals who straddle

14       

⁹³ Meyer (2007) is a useful collection of essays.

0.2 Greek–Latin Bilingualism

Careers in Rome require a knowledge of Latin.⁹⁶ Valerius Maximus reports that

⁹⁶ Jones (2005) 265, 267–8, on eastern Greek senators.

16       

0.3 Latin Literary Papyri in the Context of Education

18       

0.4 Further Evidence for Knowledge of Latin Poetry

¹²³ Latinisms in Greek documentary papyri: Dickey (2003).

Pisander of Laranda, who composed a Heroikai Theogamiai in sixty books under

¹³⁴ Gärtner (2013) 96.

20       

0.5 Festivals and Libraries

22       

the privileges granted to victorious performers and athletes.’¹⁵² Imperial involve-

¹⁵² Newby (2005) 280.

24       

inscriptions directly attest to artists performing in Latin alongside Greek.¹⁶⁶ More

in a Latin poem consisting of ﬁve elegiac couplets, inscribed over a pre-existing

quod neque conatus quisquanst neque [ . . . ]au[it].

26       

Greek.¹⁷⁴ By the second century  the city was thoroughly re-Hellenized:

¹⁷⁴ See Millis (2010) 22–3.

28       

themes), as well as the Wonders Beyond Thule of Antonius Diogenes, another

0.6 Allusion and Intertextuality