Compitum

Anke Walter, Festivals in Latin Literature: The Poetics of Celebration, Oxford, 2025.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
Collection : Oxford Scholarship Online
ISBN : 9780198931485

Festivals feature prominently in Latin literature, even in works that are not explicitly dedicated to festive days like Ovid's Fasti. This book explores the role of festivals in elegiac, lyric, and epic poetry, as well as historiography. In all of these, festivals play a more pervasive role than has so far been realized. Tibullus' elegiac oeuvre rests on an interplay between amatory and festive poetics, and Propertius uses festivals in his fourth book of elegies to question, from an amatory perspective, the memory associated with Roman festivals. In the poetry of Sulpicia and Ovid's Tristia, festivals allow voices that are otherwise marginalized to shape their own commemoration. Horace's Odes and the Carmen saeculare rest on an intriguing interplay of festivity in the private sphere, which forms but a fleeting moment, and the monumentality of public festivals. Post-Vergilian Latin epicists use festivals to explore the fragility of human identity in a world dominated by the gods, in Ovid's Metamorphoses, and to question the commemoration connected with festive days, undermining the foundational importance of festivals in the Aeneid. In Livy's ab urbe condita and Tacitus' Histories, festivals both provide structure and capture long-term developments in Roman history, while situating both works in broader historiographical and intertextual dialogues. The book sheds new light on these works, uncovering their unique ‘festive poetics'. It demonstrates that Latin literature adds important new aspects to our understanding of festivals, which offer even richer avenues of creating meaning and shaping or questioning commemoration than is often assumed.

Source : Oxford University Press

Papia, Elementarium. Littera L. Edizione critica a cura di Francesca Artemisio, Florence, 2024.

Éditeur : Sismel - Edizioni del Galluzzo
Collection : Edizione Nazionale dei Testi Mediolatini d'Italia, 71
X-237 pages
ISBN : 978-88-9290-341-8
62 €

Intorno al 1053, a séguito di un decennio di lavoro, Papias terminò la sua opera più importante, l'Elementarium doctrinae (e)rudimentum, il primo lessico latino nel quale fu sperimentato il metodo derivatorio, innestato sulla tradizionale arte glossografica che aveva raggiunto la sua massima espressione con il Liber glossarum. Fu forse proprio per la sua architettura innovativa e per l'ordito di fonti eterogenee che l'opera rappresentò uno degli strumenti enciclopedici privilegiati da lessicografi, grammatici e maestri di scuola delle generazioni successive, che ne favorirono la circolazione fino in età umanistica. Costituiscono una testimonianza tangibile della fortuna dell'opera i 147 testimoni manoscritti attualmente noti e le quattro edizioni a stampa pubblicate nell'arco di un ventennio (1476, 1485, 1491, 1496) sotto la direzione del milanese Bonino Mombrizio. Gli studi sulla tradizione dell'Elementarium, avviati il secolo scorso dal fondamentale lavoro di Violetta de Angelis, trovano in questo volume un nuovo apporto nella prima elaborazione di due stemmi, ciascuno per ogni redazione (ß e a), a partire dall'analisi del testo della lettera L, qui pubblicato per la prima volta. L'edizione, preceduta da uno studio introduttivo di carattere filologico, è corredata da un apparato critico e delle fonti, nonché da indici dettagliati che consentono al lettore il rapido reperimento di lemmi notevoli e di glosse affini registrate in sezioni diverse del testo.

Source : SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo

Dominik Maschek, The Roman Civil Wars. The Archaeology and History of a Crisis, Liverpool, 2025.

Éditeur : Liverpool University Press
432 pages
ISBN : 9781836243380
£ 115.00

The late Roman Republic was characterized by severe crises, ranging from the time of the Gracchi to the Battle of Actium and finally ending with the Principate of Augustus. Individual military leaders such as Marius, Sulla, and Pompey acquired so much power that the internal cohesion of the Republic was shattered. The Roman state descended into civil war. By drawing upon a range of case studies, from monumental building to public dining, Dominik Maschek demonstrates that the harsh realities and disruptions of civil war were intimately bound up with growing wealth and prosperity: on the one hand, they were fueled by the increasing complexity of urban life and conspicuous consumption which gave rise to greed and violent appropriation; on the other hand, by the forceful and premature promotion of new ‘controlling generations', they also played a vital role in conditioning the worldviews and socio-cultural norms that regulated the use of material culture. Drawing upon the latest advances in Roman archaeology and history, Dominik Maschek uses buildings and images, as well as rituals and acts of state, to analyze these structural underpinnings and the impact of the late Republican civil wars and for the first time offers an overall interpretation of their cultural history.

Annales de Saint-Bertin. La continuation des Annales du royaume des Francs (830-882). Texte introduit, traduit et commenté par Warren Pezé, Régine Le Jan et Adrien Bayard. Avec la collaboration de Laurent Feller, Geneviève Bührer-Thierry, Thomas Lienhard et Lucie Malbos., Paris, 2025.

Éditeur : Les Belles Lettres
Collection : La roue à livres, 104
380 pages
ISBN : 9782251456874
29,50 €

Les Annales de Saint-Bertin, continuation des Annales du royaume des Francs, sont la principale source historiographique sur la période carolingienne finissante et sur les débuts du futur royaume de France. Rédigées de 830 à 882, elles relatent les vicissitudes d'un empire en crise, avec la pénitence de Louis le Pieux en 833, la guerre civile de 840-843 et le partage de Verdun, puis retracent les premières décennies d'existence du royaume de Charles le Chauve, scandées par les conflits fratricides et les attaques normandes. Le récit s'interrompt brutalement en décembre 882, lorsqu'un raid viking chasse de sa ville le dernier rédacteur, le vieil Hincmar de Reims, qui part s'éteindre à Épernay. C'est peu dire que les Annales de Saint-Bertin offrent au lecteur une histoire en action, à la fois vivante et frappée du sceau de la Renaissance carolingienne. Dans cette première traduction des Annales en français depuis le début du XIXe siècle, les lecteurs, guidés par un riche apparat de notes, découvriront le regard volontiers critique que les Francs ont porté sur les transformations de leur société à l'aube de la féodalité.

Source : Les Belles Lettres

Lisa Devriese (éd.), Aristoteles, De coloribus. Translationes Bartholomaei de Messana et Guillelmi de Morbeka, Turnhout, 2025.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Aristoteles Latinus, vol. XVIII 1-2
lxxviii, 57 pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-61463-2
110€ (H.T.)

This volume presents the critical editions of the two Latin medieval translations of pseudo-Aristotle's De coloribus. This natural philosophical treatise on colors was translated from Greek into Latin twice during the thirteenth century. The first translation was undertaken by William of Moerbeke, of which only one partial manuscript remains extant. The second translation was executed by Bartholomew of Messina, of which 80 manuscripts survive. The critical editions of the two translations are preceded by a detailed study of the manuscript transmission and by a comparative examination with their Greek model. Following the editions is a comprehensive Greek-Latin and Latin-Greek index.

Bernhard Dombart, Alfons Kalb, Gustave Bardy, Gustave Combès (éd.), Augustin d'Hippone, La cité de Dieu : Livres XI-XIV: Formation des deux cités, Paris, 2025.

Éditeur : Institut d'Études Augustiniennes
Collection : Bibliothèque Augustinienne, 35
570 pages
ISBN : 978-2-85121-342-6
56,87 € (H.T.)

Réimpression de l'édition de 1993 : texte de B. Dombart et A. Kalb (4e éd.) ; introduction et notes par G. Bardy ; traduction française de G. Combès.