Brill’s New Pauly Supplements I - Volume 5 : The Reception of Classical Literature

A. Introduction The so-called Magical papyri (M.) are a stillgrowing corpus of sources on magic in Graeco-Roman Egypt (so far: 1st cent. BC – 6th/7th cents. AD). In addition to the Greek pieces under consideration here (standard editions: Papyri Graecae Magicae = PGM [34]; [11]), Demotic [6] and Coptic texts [27] have also been found and edited. Scholars of the M. must always bear in mind that the material compiled in the standard editions should in no way be seen as a monolithic entity. A fundamental distinction must be made between …

A. Life and work Manilius, of whom nothing else is known, devised his didactic poem Astronomica (‘Astronomy/Astrology’) during the reign of Emperor Augustus and left it, incomplete, during that of Tiberius (AD 14–37). His active period thus coincided with the latter part of Ovid’s career and with that of Germanicus. It is also with the former that his poetic art most readily finds comparison. His ‘world-poem’, Stoic in spirit, attempts to capture the universe as a whole in a poetical microcosmos. B. Reception B.1. Antiquity and Middle Ages The few echoes of Germanicus’ translation …

A. Life and work M. Valerius Martialis was born at Bilbilis in Spain between AD 38 and 41. He arrived in Rome in 64, where he honed his skills as an epigrammatist before publishing his first volume, the Liber Spectaculorum (‘On the Spectacles’). It is usually thought to have been composed for Titus’ inauguration of the Flavian amphitheatre in AD 80, though some pieces may be Domitianic. In December 85, the Xenia and Apophoreta (Books 13 and 14 in modern editions), were issued. Thereafter, M. published twelve further books of Epigrams at the rate of roughly one a year. In 98 he return…