The subject of the present volume is the connection between travel, geography and imperialism in Latin poetry. Following the growing spatialisation of literary studies as well as the current research on movement and mobility in the empire and that of space and landscape in Augustan literature, this volume advances the existing scholarship towards the examination of space, both literary and geographical, and the expansion of the Roman empire as it is articulated in the poetic production from the second century bce to late antiquity. In an interdisciplinary way, the volume approaches poetic representations of travel and geography in a variety of genres in Latin poetry, combining widely applied theories in the Humanities, such as geopoetics and psychoanalysis. Young Myers and Zimmermann Damer have produced an excellent work in this compilation of papers.
In Chapter 1, ‘Introduction: Traversing Empire’, the editors present the volume's scope, its overall argument and its general contribution to scholarship. Focusing on Horace's Odes 1.3 and Satires 1.5, they start with a thorough analysis of the poetics of travelling to demonstrate that travel and geography are strongly associated with the empire in Roman poetry. Next, they justify why literary verse is the most appropriate genre to express the poetics of travel and imperialism, namely due to a poem's structure: its edges, boundaries and middles as well as its metre. Then they situate the volume within current trends, that of the ‘spatial’ and the ‘mobility’ turn, and of psychoanalytic theories on identity. Finally, they take readers on a journey through the volume's chapters and end with a brief analysis of how this topic can be studied further.
Chapter 2, ‘The Stage at the Fair: Trade and Human Trafficking in the palliata’, by A. Richlin examines how travel and mobility in early Roman comedy are reflected in Plautus’ palliatae with its continuous references to trade and character migration (such as mercatores, captives, soldiers, female sex slaves) around the Mediterranean. In Chapter 3, ‘Expanding Geographies and Unbounded Subjects in Catullus’, S.H. Lindheim employs Lacan's psychoanalytic theory on subjectivity and desire to elucidate that the growing and uncontrollable expansion of the empire's edges and the subsequent border transgression resulted in a lack of subject stability, an anxiety intensively expressed by Catullus in his elegies. In the following paper, Chapter 4, ‘Arcadia and the Roman Imagination’, E.W. Leach explores Arcadia's perception in literary Roman imagination. Leach goes beyond identifying Arcadia as the locus amoenus and argues that this place in Greece works for the Romans as a space of labor that resonates with ideologies and moralities from pre-Saturnian Rome. Her study is centred on a variety of texts, Virgil's Eclogues and Aeneid, Ovid's Fasti and Metamorphoses as well as Statius’ Thebaid, to demonstrate that this perception of Arcadia applies to a wide range of literary spaces.
The following three chapters focus on Roman elegy; in Chapter 5, ‘Women's Travels in Latin Elegy’, A. Keith investigates the role of the travelling puellae in Roman elegy to argue that they symbolise mobility within conquered territories as part of Roman imperialism. Her sources extend to the epigraphic record as historical evidence for women, enslaved and freed, who share the same name with these elegiac puellae. Next, in Chapter 6, ‘On the Road with Tibullus: Aporia or Castration as the Way of Love’, P.A. Miller follows an interdisciplinary perspective by applying Lacanian theories to Tibullus 1.7, where the poet compares Messalla with the incarnated Osiris, both as travel facilitators and as bearers of civilisation. According to Miller, Osiris’ castration offers a paradox to this comparison; hence he argues that Messalla embodies the Lacanian Law of the father, a role ‘that always assumes both the possession of the phallus as the symbol of that Law and the phallus’ submission to the law under the sign of castration’ (p. 99). Chapter 7, ‘Competing Itineraries, Travel, and Urban Subjectivity in Ovid's Ars Amatoria’, by Zimmermann Damer is the last paper focusing on Roman love elegy. The author links notions of travel, identity and poetic writing in imperial Rome by exploring the poetics of movement within Augustan Rome as gendered acts in Ars Amatoria 1 and 3. Zimmermann Damer persuasively argues that Ovid's literary cartography of the recently transformed centre of Rome illustrates the role of movement in shaping identities.
The next two chapters focus on Flavian literature and its context. In Chapter 8, ‘Statius’ propemptikon and the Geopoetics of Silvae 3.2’, C.E. Newlands focuses on Statius’ Silvae to explore the Roman poetics of travel and geography in the Flavian era, what she describes as ‘geopoetics’ (p. 134). Newlands demonstrates that in Celer's journey the geographical references of Silv. 3.2 are a response to Lucan's geographically turbulent world, which reveal the transformation from a ruined civil war era to the imperial era of travel stability. In the poem's conclusion, as Newlands argues, Statius invites readers on another journey, that of the poet's role as Lucan's literary epic successor but in a new literary space and within new poetic boundaries. Remaining in Flavian literature but changing geographical space, the next chapter, Chapter 9, raises key themes of the volume, that of movement, travel and hybridity in Flavian poetics. In ‘Martial, Spain and the Dancers from Gades: Travel and Identity in Flavian Epigram’, S.H. Blake turns readers’ attention towards Spain to show Martial's interest in travel and identity and thus to highlight Flavian literature's centrifugal character. In her perceptive reading Blake examines how Martial's Romano-Spaniard identity is reflected in his poetry, which is in turn identified with the puellae Gaditanae (Epigr. 11.16), the seductive and itinerant girls from Gades, Spain. This parallel, as Blake argues, serves to portray Martial as the poet ‘who provides pleasure to the empire’ (p. 167).
Chapter 10, ‘Memory Spaces of Ausonius and Rutilius Namatianus’, focuses on the poetics of travel and its connection to geographical space and collective memory. G. Parker shifts the interest to the poetry of late antiquity by exploring different outlooks of recalling the Roman empire in Ausonius’ Mosella and in Namatianus’ De reditu suo. He demonstrates that the idea of ‘space’ both geographically perceived and as a literary form are highly interwoven with the poetics of memory. The volume closes with a comparative study on the association of travel and poetry in an inspiring paper by A. Meyer (Chapter 11, ‘Travelers and Texts: Reading, Writing, and Communication on the Roads of the Roman West’). With the aid of epigraphy, Meyer examines three types of verse inscriptions that were aimed at travellers throughout the Roman West, namely texts to aid travel movement, messages addressing travellers and inscriptions commemorating travel experiences. Considering travellers as audiences of speaking inscriptions, Meyer underlines the close association of mobility and travel writing in the Roman world.
An extensive index enables readers to locate names and terms in the volume. The book is well organised, with a strong thematic unity and helpful cross-references among the papers. All eleven contributions fulfil the volume's scope in the examination of travel and mobility in poetry writing from the archaic era to late antiquity. Although there are scattered references to Flavian epic's interest in geography and travel culture, an additional and separate paper on the cultural and ethnological interactions between centre and periphery as promoted in Flavian epic world would have been welcome. However, the volume overall offers an impressive combination of topics and approaches in current research and is a collection of papers that will undoubtedly take readers on an enthralling and inspiring literary journey.
