This chapter looks at the adaptations, mutations, and analogies of Ovidian themes and dynamics of metamorphosis in Greek and Roman narrative poems. The first part offers a sampling of metamorphic moments in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, arguing for a far-reaching comparability with Ovidian techniques, and also opening up a comparison between Dionysiac metamorphosis and metamorphosis in the Christian story. The second part explores the uses of metamorphosis in Latin Christian poetry on biblical stories, and in narratives of conversion, taking examples from biblical epic, Paulinus of Nola, and Prudentius. The question is posed of whether there is a specifically Christian poetics of metamorphosis.

This chapter focusses on a genre, which in recent scholarship has been unmasked as a modern invention: the ‘epyllion’. About the definition of this highly problematic term no consensus can be reached (metre? length? topic? structure?). Literary histories claim that the genre was born in the Hellenistic period and flourished again in Catullus’ time, with his Poem 64 as its main representative. Generally, they do not provide any examples of the ‘genre’ from Late Antiquity. And yet, one could argue in favour of a late antique ‘revival’, with both Latin (Dracontius, Reposianus, Ausonius, Aegritudo Perdicae) and Greek (Triphiodorus, Musaeus, Colluthus, Orphic Argonautica) representatives. This chapter looks at the ways these poems reflect genre awareness through an analysis of prefaces, prologues and other passages which stand out as (potentially) metapoetic. How do these late antique poems engage with their grand epic models? To what extent do they present themselves as a different (sub)genre and as traditional or innovative? Is the shortness thematised? If it was not a distinctive genre yet in Hellenistic times, did the epyllion, perhaps, become a genre in Late Antiquity?

Nonnus’ Paraphrase of the Gospel of John lacks a proem in which the author advances the main poetic aims of the poem and gives his intended audience a brief guide to its reading. On the contrary Juvencus’ Evangeliorum libri quattuor includes a number of programmatic spaces (especially the proem and final lines), which have been extensively analysed and related to similar paratexts in other Bible epics. This chapter proposes a new take on the question of the intended audience and possible proselytising aim of these two poems by means of a reading of the reactions to Jesus and his gospel as paradigms for how these poets related to their audiences. It pays special attention to their points of contact and divergences, on (1) symbolic images of the audience (Matthew’s parable of the sower, John’s initial Hymn of the logos), (2) introductions of choral characters as they interact with Jesus, and (3) divisions of the audience, which it relates to the specific context of creation of both poems: the Constantinian Latin-speaking West for Juvencus and 430–60 Alexandria, dominated by the figure of Cyril (bishop 412–44), for Nonnus.

This chapter discusses modern trends in the study of late antique Latin poetry, namely the aesthetics of the jeweled style and especially the scholarly discourse on ‘nonreferentiality’ in allusion, and seeks to apply the concepts underlying this scholarship to late antique Greek epic, in particular to Triphiodorus and Quintus of Smyrna. As a case study and the focus of the chapter, allusions to Apollonius’ Argonautica, previously noted but undiscussed in scholarship on Triphiodorus, are discussed at length. The chapter ends with a re-examination of the in-proem in Book 12 of Quintus’ Posthomerica, and argues, in a nuancing of recent scholarship, that the passage’s much-discussed allusion to Callimachus can be read as ultimately ‘nonreferential’ in function.

Paratexts of all kinds became more significant as antiquity wore on. The Homeric epics, for example, and Herodotus’ Histories were not originally divided into books; the canonical book divisions were made only in the Hellenistic period. Despite evidence for the spread of paratexts, editors and scholars often ignore them. They do so, in part, because paratexts are inherently unstable texts; and yet, as ephemeral products of their own literary culture, paratexts provide precious evidence for how poetry was read at any given time or place. The first goal of this chapter is to the collate evidence for section headings, illustrations, and prefaces being produced for poetic texts in the East and West in Late Antiquity in Latin and in Greek. The second goal is to compare their use in each tradition and to analyze where the cultures either converged or departed in their use of paratexts. The evidence collated reveals that new paratextual forms appear around the same time in Greek and Latin, but that there are also separate developments in each tradition.

The literary epigram is one of the most versatile ancient literary genres, and epigrammatists have often used it as a testing ground for the recollection and construction of their literary past. This chapter compares the corpus of Decimus Magnus Ausonius and Palladas of Alexandria, two eminent representatives of the epigrammatic genre from the later imperial period. Ausonius’ dialogue with the literary past is characterised by a discourse about the value, validity and reliability of classical authors and authorities from the Greek and the Roman world. For this purpose, Ausonius uses various techniques such as the juxtaposition of acknowledged and anonymous sources, the inclusion of ‘fake sources’, and a recurring discussion of Greek versus Roman authorities. In contrast, Palladas constructs a persona of himself which resorts to Greek authorities only and, especially, to Homer. Palladas appropriates Homer and the Homeric epics in order to construct his personal voice, whereas the actual discourse about classical authors and authorities remains comparatively flat and limited as compared to Ausonius.

Major developments in poetic genre happened in Late Antiquity: some genres such as biblical epic first occurred in that period, and the generic openness of other late antique poems seems to question the notion of genre as such. In this chapter I argue that the classical system of poetic genre imploded in Late Antiquity and transformed into a more flexible and open system in which classical understandings of genre coexisted with both generic innovations and a reduced importance of genre itself. After imploding, late antique poetic genre continued to use traditional genre markers such as appropriate subject matter, generic models, and metre, but it also introduced generic innovations in the form of generically unique works, genre mixing, and new genres while at the same time playing down the significance of genre as a category. This transformation of poetic genre took place in both halves of the Roman Empire, as evidence from Greek and Latin poetry will show. As a consequence, both Greek and Latin poets used genre more flexibly and relied less on it to communicate with their audiences.

This chapter examines late antique, Greek and Latin centos from the perspective of the poets who wrote them and the authors who read them, with specific attention given to Ausonius’ preface and epilogue to his Cento Nuptialis, Aelia Eudocia’s prefatory poem to her Homeric Cento, and proem of Proba’s Vergilian cento. The scope of this chapter also includes other treatments of centos, in particular that of Jerome. My reading of these paratextual and critical moments of Greco-Roman cento authors and readers highlights recurring themes which clarify the various ways that appropriating ‘canonical’ texts to create a new whole was viewed. This chapter contributes to the scholarly conversations about literary ownership, textual unity, and notions of the sacred and the profane by situating these themes within the context of (re)using Homeric and Vergilian verse in Late Antiquity.

This chapter examines the peculiar practice, common in late antique epic poetry, of comparing a character to a divinity stripped of their visual attributes. From the works of Claudian, Nonnus, and Colluthus it analyzes three case studies that epitomize this form of comparison and illustrate its use in a specific literary and cultural context. Such comparisons are shown to rely on the reader’s familiarity with visual representations of the pagan gods and to reflect a growing interest in and engagement with the visual arts in late antique literature. In defining characters by attributes they do not possess, the poets draw attention to their visual ambiguity and vulnerability, and allow internal and external audiences to gaze at them uninhibitedly. Female characters in particular are thus proffered as objects of the lusting gaze and are denied individual visual identities and narrative agency. This literary emphasis on artistic beauty, stripped of its attributes and, by extension, divine power, resembles contemporary Christian attempts to de-contextualize pagan artworks by removing their religious attributes and associations, reframing them as purely aesthetic objects.

In the past few years, it has been possible to notice parallel developments in the study of both Latin and Greek late antique poetry, two neighbouring and growing scholarly fields. Recently published studies reveal an increased focus on the contemporary context and, in relation to that, on the ‘otherness’ of late antique aesthetics, when compared with the poetics of earlier periods that classically trained scholars have been taught to admire.1 Long considered poetry of bad taste from a period of decline, late antique poetry fascinates classicists today mainly because of its otherness, its productive reception of the classical period, its innovations in terms of literary forms, and the creativity with which it responds to the ‘seismic cultural changes’2 of late antique society.