Durham E-Theses Ancient Portraits of Poets: Communities, Canons, Receptions WALLIS, WILLIAM How to cite: WALLIS, WILLIAM (2016) Ancient Portraits of Poets: Communities, Canons, Receptions, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11937/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 1 Ancient Portraits of Poets: Communities, Canons, Receptions William Philip Wallis This thesis is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Classics and Ancient History Durham University 2016 2 Abstract This thesis examines the ancient sculptural portraits of poets in relation to the literary reception of their works by investigating a range of contexts for, and interactions with, these objects. Contemporary scholarship has found it productive to examine biographical material relating to ancient poets as evidence for early reception. This thesis explores how the ancient portraits of poets take part in the constructions of these authors, and how they are integrated into the reception of ancient poetry. Recent scholarship has cast doubts over the methodologies conventionally used to relate portraits to the biographical reception of their subjects: there are strong arguments that an individualistic character-based approach to these objects can mislead us about how they were perceived in their various ancient contexts. This thesis takes a different approach by considering the archaeological contexts and literary interactions in which we find these objects, from fourth-century BC Athens to sixteenth-century AD Ferrara. I show how, through these contexts and interactions, the sculptural portraits of poets can engage in keys ways with the literary reception of their subjects: Hellenistic communities use portraits to strengthen their connections to prestigious poets; Roman aristocrats use portraits of poets to signal engagement with Greek culture and therefore elite status; poets are positioned within literary histories and canons through programmatic assemblages; later poets focus on portraits in order to explore their relationships to their predecessors; finally, early modern writers present these portraits as offering an engagement with an absent poet that complements reading the poet’s works. These, then, are the three main concerns of this thesis: communities, canons, and receptions. The case studies examined in this thesis show that the portraits of poets have been engaged in literary reception from antiquity to the present, and that they have raised persistent questions about presence and absence in literary encounters. 3 Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................. 2 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ 3 Table of Illustrations ....................................................................................................... 5 Conventions for Names and Translations ................................................................... 9 Statement of Copyright ................................................................................................ 10 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 10 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 11 Methodology: Negotiating Absence and Presence ...................................................... 13 Biography ....................................................................................................................... 15 Portraits .......................................................................................................................... 16 Greek and/or Roman Objects ...................................................................................... 23 Portraits and Presence: A Persistent Problem ........................................................... 26 Chapter Outline ................................................................................................................. 27 1. Greek Cities and Citizens: Poet Portraits and Identity ................................................ 34 1.1 Portrait Institutions ..................................................................................................... 34 Honorific Portraits of Contemporary Poets: Civic Ideology................................... 35 Honorific and Cult Portraits of long-dead Poets: Civic Prestige and Identity ..... 43 1.2 Portraits of Homer in Ionian Cities .......................................................................... 52 Chios ............................................................................................................................... 54 Colophon ........................................................................................................................ 59 Smyrna ............................................................................................................................ 69 2. Roman Elites: Poet Portraits and Paideia ........................................................................ 82 Sculpture and Identity in the Roman Villa ................................................................ 82 Art, Education, and Status: The Performance of Paideia .......................................... 94 2.2 Villa dei Papiri ............................................................................................................. 97 The Poets ........................................................................................................................ 99 The Sculptural Assemblage ....................................................................................... 109 4 2.3 Villa dei Bruttii Praesentes....................................................................................... 113 The Poets ...................................................................................................................... 118 Poets, Synkrisis, and the Performance of Paideia ..................................................... 122 3. Ancient Poets: Sculptural Groups and Literary Canons ........................................... 134 3.1 Groups of Poet Portraits in Greece: The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens .......... 134 The Three Tragedians ................................................................................................. 137 Other Poets in the Theatre ......................................................................................... 152 3.2 Groups of Portraits in Rome .................................................................................... 160 Roman Imperial Libraries .......................................................................................... 164 4. Living Poets ..................................................................................................................... 172 4.1 Living Greek Poets on Portraits of Poets ............................................................... 174 Posidippus of Pella and Philitas of Cos ................................................................... 176 Theocritus’ Epigrams on Portraits of Poets ............................................................. 188 Leonidas of Tarentum on Anacreon ......................................................................... 201 4.2 Living Roman Poets and Portraits of Poets ........................................................... 209 Silius Italicus and the Portrait of Virgil.................................................................... 211 Ps.-Lucian, Thersagoras, and the Portrait of Homer .............................................. 215 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 220 5. Modern Viewers and Scholars ...................................................................................... 222 5.1 Orsini’s Collection in Portrait-books: Archaeology or Resurrection ................. 227 Orsini’s Texts in the Imagines et Elogia (1570) .......................................................... 233 Lorenzo Gambara’s Text in the Imagines et Elogia .................................................. 240 Illustrations in Orsini’s Imagines et Elogia ................................................................ 249 5.2 ‘In sembianze et in parole’: Engagement with Poets and their Portraits in Libraries ............................................................................................................................ 268 Pirro Logorio and the Castello Estense in Ferrara .................................................. 268 Conclusions: Acknowledging Absence, and