Campania in the Flavian Poetic Imagination

The region of Campania with its fertility and volcanic landscape exercised great influence over the Roman cultural imagination. A hub of activity outside the city of Rome, the Bay of Naples was a place of otium, leisure and quiet, repose and literary productivity, and yet also a place of danger: the looming Vesuvius inspired both fear and awe in the region's inhabitants, while the Phlegraean Fields evoked the story of the gigantomachy and sulphurous lakes invited entry to the Underworld. For Flavian writers in particular, Campania became a locus for literary activity and geographical disaster when in 79 CE, the eruption of the volcano annihilated a great expanse of the region, burying under a mass of ash and lava the surrounding cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. In the aftermath of such tragedy the writers examined in this volume - Martial, Silius Italicus, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus - continued to live, work, and write about Campania, which emerges from their work as an alluring region held in the balance of luxury and peril.

Antony Augoustakis, Professor and Head of Classics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,R. Joy Littlewood, Independent scholar, based in Oxford

Antony Augoustakis is Professor and Head of Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Statius, Thebaid 8 (Oxford, 2016), Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic (Oxford, 2010), and Plautus' Mercator (Bryn Mawr, 2009), and has also edited and co-edited several volumes on Flavian epic, Roman comedy, and late antiquity. He is currently completing a commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 3 with R. Joy Littlewood and serves as editor of The Classical Journal.

R. Joy Littlewood is an independent scholar based in Oxford. She has published commentaries on Ovid's Fasti 6 (Oxford, 2006), Silius Italicus' Punica 7 (Oxford, 2011), and Silius Italicus' Punica 10 (Oxford, 2017). Her current research projects include the completion of the fourth volume of J. C. McKeown's commentary on Ovid's Amores and a commentary on Silius Italicus' Punica 3 with Antony Augoustakis.

Frontmatter
List of Maps
List of Abbreviations
List of Contributors
Introduction
1. Campania in the Flavian Poets' Imagination, Antony Augoustakis and R. Joy Littlewood
Campania and its Sites
2. Literary Representations of Naples in Flavian Poetry, Claudio Buongiovanni
3. A Tale of Two Waters: Agrippina's Death in Flavian Poetry, Lauren Donovan Ginsberg
4. The Fires of Campania: Typhoeus and the Bay of Naples in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, Darcy Krasne
5. The Other Campanian Volcano: Inarime in Flavian Epic, Nikoletta Manioti
6. Martial and Campania, Etienne Wolff
7. Laudabo digne non satis tamen Baias: Martial's Epigrammatic Campania, Margot Neger
Statius' Silvae
8. Campanian Geography in Statius' Silvae, Paolo Esposito
9. Laudes Campaniae: Myth and Fantasies of Power in Statius' Silvae, Gianpiero Rosati
10. Quam Romanus honos et Graia licentia miscent: Cultural Fusion, Ethical Temper, and Poetic Blend in Statius' Ideal Campania, Federica Bessone
11. Through the Past to the Future of Naples: Text and History in Silvae 4.8, Ana Loio
12. Semirutos . . . de pulvere vultus: Vesuvius, Statius, and Trauma, Arianna Sacerdoti
Silius Italicus' Punica
13. Campania and the Punica, Marco Fucecchi
14. Campania at War, Thomas Biggs
15. Silius' Cumae and its Augustan Predecessors, Alison Keith
16. In a Land of Gods and Monsters: Silius Italicus' Capua, Claire Stocks
17. The Many Faces of Capua: Its Narrative and Programmatic Roles in Punica 11-13, Elina Pyy and Michiel van der Keur
Epilogue
18. Statius and his Renaissance Readers: The Rediscovery of a poeta Neapolitanus, Ian Fielding
Endmatter
Bibliography
Index Locorum
General Index