This page is currently under construction!

Lucan bibliographies:
Lucan bibliography: New publications 2008-2013

Lucan bibliography: Additions to the complete bibliography (until 2007)

Lucan bibliography: New publications 2006-2007

Lucan complete bibliography (alphabetical)

Lucan complete bibliography (chronological)

Bibliography on the transmission and reception of Lucan’s “Bellum Civile”

Conferences:

25/26.09.2018: Seminari Lucanei I. In memoria di Emanuele Narducci. Seminario organizzato dal Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell’Università degli Studi di Salerno(program).

06.11.2020: Titubanti Testi
On Friday, 06.11., a digital event of the Titubanti Testi series organized by Marco Formisano (University of Ghent) with participation from Mainz took place from 6 pm: Christine Walde and Matthias Heinemann spoke on Lucan 1:67-86. The recording of the event is available here as a Youtube video.

Mainz research work

J. Breuer, Rhetoric and Religion. The evaluation and use of pagan fields of knowledge in Arnobius of Sicca (Altertumswissenschaftliches Kolloquium. 29), Stuttgart 2021.

The rhetoric teacher Arnobius of Sicca, who converted to Christianity, wrote Adversus nationes around 300 AD, which represents a central diploma of the early Christians’ intellectual confrontation with their largely hostile environment. After considering the field of tension between “Ancient Philosophy and Christianity” and the literary form of the work, Johannes Breuer identifies the Arnobian theory and practice of dealing with the ancient pagan fields of knowledge of rhetoric, Philosophy and poetry. The analysis of the work under functional, forensic-rhetorical criteria (including the prose rhythm) proves to be a central hermeneutical key to a new understanding of the writing, which has often been criticized in research.

E. Groth, uocis pura sinceritas. Untersuchungen zum Prosarhythmus im Corpus Cyprianaeum (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums. 28), Paderborn 2021.

The artistic prose of the martyred bishop Cyprian of Carthage was stylistically influential for numerous late antique and medieval authors. The analysis of his rhythmic practice and the relationship between form and content shows the conscious use of stylistic devices for the proclamation of faith. Based on the statistical analysis of his complete works, the interpretation of selected texts offers far-reaching insights into Cyprian’s literary oeuvre. In addition to the treatises and letters considered to be genuine, the pseudo-Cyprian writings are also examined with regard to their prose rhythm.

The separately published colometric-rhythmic complete edition of Cyprian’s writings can be found here: E. Groth, kolometrische Analysen zu Cyprian

S. Komenda, Forms and Functions of the Ciceronian Prose Rhythm, Baden-Baden 2021.

The work deals with Cicero’s prose rhythm in a concrete colometric analysis and uses it for continuous text interpretation. The core thesis is that the Latin word accents already have a constitutive meaning for the prose rhythm in classical Latin, so that in Cicero’s case, too, a set of five so-called “clauses” is essentially sufficient for a content-based prosarhythmic analysis (in the context of the triad compositio – concinnitas – numerus).

Seneca’s Epistulae morales are not only an influential work of Latin literature, but also a central diploma of Roman Philosophy. Despite their importance, there are still some gaps in research on the Epistulae. In particular, there is a lack of commentaries that systematically analyze individual books.

A total of 124 letters from Seneca to an addressee named Lucilius have come down to us, spread over 20 books of varying length. A progression from shorter letters with simple content to increasingly longer and more complex texts has long been recognized in the arrangement of the letters. It can also be assumed that the book structure has a literary and content-related significance, as has long been recognized for other books of letters as well as for books of epigrams, for example. Nevertheless, there are mainly commentaries on Seneca’s epistles that offer a selection of letters and thus do not pay sufficient attention to the book structure and progression. Not least because of this eclectic approach, research into the individual letters is also heterogeneous, as some epistles have received considerably more attention than others.

This research gap has been increasingly closed in recent times, so that commentaries are now available for books 1 to 4 and for the beginning of book 6. Book 5, however, has not yet been adequately researched. This is all the more regrettable as this book raises questions and themes that are important for the work as a whole. First and foremost, the figure of Lucilius should be considered here, which takes on a clearer contour in this book. In addition, the book proves to be particularly coherent in terms of its structure, which is why it is worth tracing the means by which this coherence is achieved.

The project will address these and other questions in a volume on the 5th book of the Epistulae morales and thus close the aforementioned research gap. To this end, the eleven letters(Ep. 42-52) of this book will be comprehensively and coherently indexed for the first time by means of an introduction and a scholarly commentary. The volume will also be accompanied by a reading text and a German translation. Additional lectures and essays will focus on overarching issues such as the structure of the entire corpus and thus classify the insights gained from Book 5.

Contact: PD Dr. Dominik Berrens(dberrens@uni-mainz.de)

https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/516319177

Res gestae

Publications:

• Review of: Graver, M.: The Literary Philosopher, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2023, in: Classical Review 74.1 (2024), 108-110 (DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X23002196).
• Nullum est animal altero doctius. Insects in Seneca’s Philosophical Texts, in: Marciniak, P. (ed.): Insects in the Pre-Modern World, Berlin/Boston (with the publisher).
• The Structure of Seneca’s Epistulae morales and the Construction of the Addressee, in: Latomus (accepted).
• How does Otanes communicate with his daughter? Reflections on Hdt. 3,68-69, in: Wiener Studien 138 (2025) (in press).
• Lucilius as author. Reflections on Letter 46 of the Epistulae morales, in: Millennium 22 (2025) (accepted).

Lectures:

• 18.05.2023: Letters from the Practice: Didactics, Polemics, and Self-Fashioning in Early Modern Epistolae medicinales; Conference: Ancient – Medieval – Early Modern Latin & Greek Letter Collections. Methodological and Thematic Intersections, Durham University.
• 06.07.2023: Nullum est animal altero doctius – Insects in Seneca’s philosophical writings; Conference: Insects in the Premodern World, Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München/MZAW.
• 13.07.2024: Lucilius as author. Reflections on Letter 46 of the Epistulae morales; Middle Rhine Symposium, Goethe University Frankfurt.
• 21.10.2024: The structure of Seneca’s Epistulae morales and the construction of the addressee; semester opening, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

“I’m not complicated, you just don’t understand me.” – Namika 2016

“I’m not complicated, you just don’t understand me.” – Namika 2016 or Cicero 1st century BC (?)

Cicero is known for his long and usually convoluted sentences, where at the end of a sentence you no longer know what he was talking about at the beginning.
But why does Cicero write like this and not differently or simply? This is precisely where a text analysis based on the prose rhythm can come in and help students with translation and interpretation.

By splitting a single sentence into meaningful cola, the complexity of more difficult sentence structures and grammatical phenomena can be broken down. As the cola usually only consists of a few words, it is easier to keep track of the individual units of meaning and thus the translation.

The colon endings are then divided into different rhythms based on fixed rules, which are referred to as cursus forms or clauses. An interpretation, or at least an approach, can emerge from this. This applies both to theoretical writings and to (political) speeches.
Cicero should form the introduction to the world of the prose rhythm, as he is the one of the school authors who used it most intensively.

On this homepage you will find a series plan with notes on implementation as well as Latin texts that have been prepared in different levels of internal differentiation.

We hope you enjoy using it! 🥳
Marie Döngi, Johanna Felicitas Ehmer, Maira Kathrin Kleemann

Cicero: In Catilinam 4

Here you will find the series planning and the materials.

For picture 1 (lesson 1) we suggest the following picture: https://images.app.goo.gl/7NAPLXFiBazeG8Xp6.

For picture 2 (lesson 3) we suggest the following picture: https://images.app.goo.gl/o2RqLFmTWATaFiUD8.

Laelius de amicitia 1-2

Stay tuned!

Quintilian

Stay tuned!

Funded by the Gutenberg Teaching Council (GTC) as an “Innovative Teaching Project” (2016-2017)

Click here for the Latin theater group.

Project description

Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid: anyone who studies Classical Philology knows the satisfaction of reading, understanding and interpreting those authors who helped form the foundation of world literature. Students’ own active language competence is also trained on these classics of “high” literature and tested in written form. However, there is a danger of losing sight of an essential component of ancient culture: Spoken Latin, the language and culture of everyday Roman life, is rarely the subject of university teaching. This is where the project “Performance of an ancient drama in the original language” comes in, which serves to establish a Latin theater group and thus a unique feature of the Institute of Classical Studies at JGU: A Latin theater group under the direction of a teaching staff does not exist at any other German university. In three courses over the course of two semesters, a Latin comedy will be staged in the original language. By practicing and actively spokespersons of the suddenly very lively Latin language, the students expand their language competence, promote those personal and social skills that are of great importance not only for the teaching profession by performing on stage and interacting with each other, and gain insights into everyday Roman language and culture, which is rarely considered in the subject. At the same time, Roman comedy escapes the shadowy existence it leads as a supposedly irrelevant genre in German research and teaching, which is mainly due to inappropriate reception: ancient comedies are not plays to be read, but only unfold their potential on stage. In order to achieve the broadest possible impact, a translation prepared by the students should be shown in surtitles during the performance. This model can be transferred to other subjects that deal with foreign-language drama texts, especially older language levels.

Contact
Dr. Daniel Groß; groda@uni-mainz.de

“Religion” and “violence” and their possible interdependencies are central fields of contemporary discourse, although (or precisely because?) both terms famously refuse to be conclusively defined.

Even in antiquity, a connection between religion (in the broadest sense) and violence is repeatedly stated or constructed and evaluated in a wide variety of epochs and text genres. This conference will focus on the modes and approaches used by authors to religiously legitimize or delegitimize violence in antiquity. We would like to integrate as broad a spectrum of perspectives and case studies as possible and thereby promote a fruitful interdisciplinary exchange.

Contact and further information: PD Dr. Johannes Breuer (breuerj@uni-mainz.de) / Dr. Jochen Walter (walterj@uni-mainz.de)

The Histories of Gregory of Tours are among the most important literary diplomas and historical sources for the period of transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. The verdict of research on the Latin literature and language of the first centuries of the Frankish Empire is often very negative. The publishers of the authoritative edition of the Histories, Krusch/Levison, also assume that Gregory’s original text could only have been written in poor Merovingian Latin. This is also the picture presented by the reconstructed text version, even though many manuscripts offer a much better text. Although this approach has been repeatedly criticized, a new edition of the Histories has not yet been published. The fundamental question facing the publishers of a new edition is that of the state of Gregory’s language. An analysis of the so-called prose rhythm can serve as a suitable indicator of an author’s stylistic ability and the quality of his language. Initial preliminary work has shown that the Bishop of Tours places great value on a stylistic-rhythmic structure. This provides an important argument for a positive assessment of his level of education and supports the demand for a new edition.

This DFG project aims to produce a digital critical edition and a faithful translation of the second book of the Histories, which will be published via the digital infrastructure of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. The manuscript transcriptions and collations will also be published online once the project is completed. In addition, comprehensive colometric-rhythmic analyses of the text versions depicted in the collations will be carried out and evaluated; the results will be published in a separate publication. The edition of the second book will pave the way for a long-term project in which a complete edition of the Histories and a historical-archaeological commentary will be presented.

Employees

PD Dr. Rebekka Schirner

Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Blümer

Financing

DFG