Latin 4105: Fragments of archaic literature

I. Poetry

No, these texts are not on any reading list. But given the scarcity of what remains of Latin literature before the first century BCE, it is worth at least having a look. The bad news: commentary is hard to find. For Livius and Naevius, you might find it useful to look in the Loeb, Remains of Old Latin, vols. 1 and 2. For Ennius, Annales, there is also the massive commentary of O. Skutsch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius; for his tragedies, there is H. D. Jocelyn, The Tragedies of Ennius. Both of these should be in the Ancient and Medieval study room.

The fragments of the early epic poets survive largely because of their immense influence on later Roman poetry, notably on Virgil; many of them are quoted in the scholarly tradition. The same is true of the fragments given here of Ennius' tragedies; Cicero quotes the large fragments of the Andromacha and Medea Exul--Ennius was his favorite poet.

For the sake of transition from Plautus, however, you might begin with the fragments of Naevius' Tarentilla (The Girl from Tarentum), which are preserved by an archaist lexicographer and had no visible influence on the poetic tradition. But in looking at them, see what you can make of the play. How is it like Plautus in language or what you can discern of plot? Or, to contemplate a larger question, how unique is Plautus? The only substantial study of this question (very important, if you're interested in comedy) is J. Wright, Dancing in Chains: The stylistic unity of the comoedia palliata (Rome 1974).

When you turn from this to the epic tradition, first try to figure out the Saturnian meter, used by Livius and Naevius. If you succeed, you're doing better than most people, since there is no one agreed-on explanation: is it quantitative, or stress? What is clear is that it has two parts, the first longer than the second, with (generally) four beats in the first and three in the second (but not always). How is it different from the hexameter? What does Livius do in adapting Homer? Morel (and other editions) generally quotes the relevant lines of the Odyssey. Naevius raises different questions: narrative technique, among other things; and the structure of the work. His subject is nominally the first Punic War, but frr. 4-5 and 23 clearly go back to the Trojan War. How does he link them?

And finally, Ennius' tragedies. Pay particular attention to the Medea, and compare it to its model, Euripides' Medea. What is different, and why? How does Ennius make tragic language, in this and in the Andromacha? How is Roman tragedy different from Greek--and, so far as one can tell from the fragments, it certainly is.

Bibliography:

There isn't much, at least not much general and in English. The introduction to Jocelyn's edition of Ennius (see above) is a useful start on early tragedy; see also R. Brooks, Ennius and Roman Tragedy (New York 1981, but written in the 1950s). On epic, see the articles of O. Skutsch collected in Studia Enniana (London 1968) and on all the early epic poets, see S. Goldberg, Roman Republican Epic (1995). Gratwick in Cambridge History is again good.

II. Prose

Courtney's introduction is excellent on archaic prose style, and his commentary is very useful. For a general introduction to historiography, see E. Badian, "The Early Historians" in Dorey, ed., Latin Historians (London 1966)--a generally useful volume. The question to ask yourself is about the choice of style: are these archaic writers (from our point of view) or are they also archaizing writers (from their own point of view). How does one create a prose style? In Rome, as in general, poetry was invented well before prose, and Ennius and Cato are the first writers of stylized Latin prose--considerably later that Livius and Naevius.