Cynthia Damon
Biographic Data
| ID | 5396265 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cynthia Damon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cynthia |
| FAMILY NAME | Damon |
| SIGNATURE | DAMON C |
| AFFILIATIONS | California University of Pennsylvania |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 123 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 41 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 7 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Livy
Pliny Rewrites Cato
Cato’s de Agricultura was an important source for Pliny’s Naturalis Historia . Cato himself appears sixteen times in Pliny’s lists of sources, and in the text proper (Pliny tells us explicitly more than eighty times that he is reproducing Catonian material; most of it comes from the de Agricultura . A dozen or so passages are or purport to be direct quotations, but most are paraphrases; Catonian content in Plinian words. The present paper is a st…
Situating Catullus
The desire to situate Catullus and his poems at the tumultuous midpoint of first-century bc Rome is both hard to resist and hard to satisfy. The basic problem can be glimpsed through a confrontation of two scholarly positions represented in a collection of influential papers on Catullus.
Ennius' Annals
Looking for auctoritas in Ennius’ Annals
In the present paper I explore the Annals looking for demonstrations of historiographical authority. More specifically, I look for traces of a historiographical response to the crisis of authority created by the existence of conflicting stories about the past. I begin by reviewing the the poem’s expressions of dubiety, to see whether any of them reflects narrative uncertainty. I then turn to the intractable historiographical uncertainties involve…
Looking for Seneca’s Historiae in Suetonius’ Life of Tiberius
The aim of this paper is to identify potentially Senecan material in Suetonius' Life of Tiberius, the site of one of the two generally accepted references to the Historiae (Tib. 73.2 = FRHist 74 F1). Given the paucity of the evidence for the Historiae the discussion is necessarily speculative, but suggestive connections are found especially in material pertinent to equites Romani or tendentiously pro-Caligula. If Seneca's Historiae did herald a n…
The Epic Journey in Greek and Roman Literature
This volume explores journeys across time and space in Greek and Latin literature, taking as its starting point the paradigm of travel offered by the epic genre. The epic journey is central to the dynamics of classical literature, offering a powerful lens through which characters, authors, and readers experience their real and imaginary worlds. The journey informs questions of identity formation, narrative development, historical emplotment, and …
Defining Home, Defining Rome
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Eris vs. Aemulatio
Competition is everywhere in antiquity. It took many forms: the upper class competed with their peers and with historical and mythological predecessors; artists of all kinds emulated generic models and past masterpieces; philosophers and their schools vied with one another to give the best interpretation of the world; architects and doctors tried to outdo their fellow craftsmen. Discord and conflict resulted, but so did innovation, social cohesio…
Writing with Posterity in Mind
Thucydides and Tacitus are both uncomfortable authors whose unsparing commitment to revealing the truth results in grim depictions of the amoral deployment of political power—power for the sake of power—in idiosyncratic and difficult idioms. However, Tacitus never announces a program of Thucydides-imitation, whether pertaining to methodology or theme. Nor do ancient commentators link Tacitus to his Greek predecessor. Nevertheless, the two are muc…
Studies on the Text of Caesar's Bellum civile
'Studies on the Text of Caesar's Bellum Civile' is a companion volume to Damon's revised Oxford Classical Texts edition of Caesar's 'Bellum civile', his account of his civil war with Pompey. Comprising three parts, this volume investigates the detailed philological arguments that underpin the revised edition of the text
Lxxxviii
"LXXXVIII" published on by null.
Lxxviii
"LXXVIII" published on by null.
Oxford Classical Texts
Lxxviii
"LXXVIII" published on by null.
Studies on the Text of Caesar's Bellum civile
Studies on the Text of Caesar's Bellum Civile' is a companion volume to Damon's revised 'Oxford Classical Texts' edition of Caesar's 'Bellum civile', his account of his civil war with Pompey. Comprising three parts, it investigates the detailed philological arguments that underpin the revised edition of the text
Suetonius the Ventriloquist
This chapter surveys Suetonius’ prose style, particularly his tendency to include the emperors’ own words in verbatim quotation. The metaphor of the ‘ventriloquist’ is apt for Suetonius, who frequently uses his biographical subject’s own language to display their character. This method is in direct contrast with the custom of Roman historians, especially Tacitus, who rewrites the original material in his sources, including speeches, to fit with t…
Rhetorics of Land and Power in the Polla Inscription (CIL I2 638)
The famous inscription from Polla reporting a Roman magistrate’s management of problems and opportunities in Italian and provincial contexts is a perennial tease: its information is rich but contradictory. In this paper we accept a second century bce date for the inscription and the events it reports but leave the much discussed question of the dedicator’s identity aside in order to focus on the inscription’s rhetoric: by looking at the grounds o…
Vertis in Usum
Quid Tibi Ego Videor In Epistulis? Cicero’s Verecundia
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Chapter Eight,. Pliny On Apion
Apion was a first century success story. Apion contributed to the Homeric scholarship of his day, producing a Glossary of Homeric Expressions and lecturing widely on Homeric topics; indeed according to Seneca Apion toured Greece during Caligula's principate and 'everywhere had Homer's name joined to his'. Apion's work survives in fragments only, but what we know about his reputation in antiquity suggests that his approach to scholarly endeavor as…
The Historian's Presence, or, There and Back Again
This chapter is an investigation of a Tacitean metaphor for historiography and its implications for the historian's role in history. The metaphor of the historian's physical proximity to his subject matter, which is found in the Annals 4 digression contrasting Tacitus's work with that of historians of earlier periods, is an offshoot of the enargeia that often enlivens a narrative. It is also one of the many connections between this digression and…
Quid Tibi Ego Videor in Epistulis? Cicero’s Verecundia
Intestinum Scelus
This chapter examines Tacitus' representation of the legacy of civil war in his history of the Julio‐Claudian period, the Annals, arguing that civil war persists during the pax Augusta as a kind of banalization of state violence against citizens, a political system that consumes its own. It studies Tacitus' multi‐episode account of Nero's paranoid, possibly cynical, and ultimately self‐defeating appropriation of civil war exempla to motivate the …
Chapter Three. Too Close? Historian And Poet In The Apocolocyntosis
According to the author, whatever scholarly box we try to put the Apocolocyntosis into, it escapes to show readers a new facet. This chapter tries to catch the glint of one such facet: the deformation and defamation of historiography, so striking in a satire on the deification of an emperor who fancied himself a historian. It focuses on historiography, but the rather extensive set of parallel passages considered in the chapter perhaps permits ext…
Citizens of Discord
PREFACE ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS LIST OF FIGURES INTRODUCTION (THE EDITORS) 1. Beginnings, Endings 2. The two-headed state: How Romans explained civil war (T. P. Wiseman) 3. Word at The prequel (William W. Batstone) 4. Rome's first civil war and the fragility of republican political culture (Harriet I. Flower) 5. Civil war? What civil war? Usurpers in the Historia Augusta (Cam Grey) II. CYCLES 6. v Learning from that violent schoolmaster: Thucydide…
Caesar’s Civil War
Caesar's Civil War is an unfinished masterpiece. It was abandoned by an author who found himself living in a different world than that which saw its commencement. A snapshot of the late republic, it offers a vivid and detailed account of the troubled Roman empire near the turn to the common era. In it, Caesar recounts his break with the Senate and general Pompey and narrates the events of the nineteen months of civil war that followed. It ends af…
Ancient Historiography and its Contexts
This volume collects essays written by colleagues and friends as a tribute to Tony Woodman, Gildersleeve Professor of Latin at the University of Virginia. These essays, like Woodman's own work, cover topics in Latin poetry, oratory, and Greek and Roman historiography. Recurrent themes are the importance of rhetoric and rhetorical training, the skilful use of language and recurrent motifs in narrative, the use and adaptation of topoi, the importan…
Studies on the Text of Caesar's Bellum civile
Studies on the Text of Caesar's Bellum Civile' is a companion volume to Damon's revised 'Oxford Classical Texts' edition of Caesar's 'Bellum civile', his account of his civil war with Pompey. Comprising three parts, it investigates the detailed philological arguments that underpin the revised edition of the text
The Trial of Cn. Piso in Tacitus' Annals and the Senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre
The Trial of Cn. Piso in Tacitus’ Annals and the Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre: New Light on Narrative Technique Cynthia Damon In writing the narrative of Germanicus’ death and Piso’s trial in Annals 2 and 3 Tacitus produced, in the estimation of two distinguished and perceptive Taciteans, “a text of unresolved ambiguity.” For Woodman and Martin, Tacitus’ achievement is the more striking when contrasted with the “monotonous confidence” of…
Narrative and Mimesis in the "Idylls" of Theocritus
Rhetorics of Land and Power in the Polla Inscription (CIL I2 638)
The famous inscription from Polla reporting a Roman magistrate’s management of problems and opportunities in Italian and provincial contexts is a perennial tease: its information is rich but contradictory. In this paper we accept a second century bce date for the inscription and the events it reports but leave the much discussed question of the dedicator’s identity aside in order to focus on the inscription’s rhetoric: by looking at the grounds o…
The Art of Forgetting
Reviewed by: The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture Cynthia Damon Harriet I. Flower . The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture. Studies in the History of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xxiv + 400 pp. 75 black-and-white ills. 1 map. Cloth. $59.95. Despite its title, this book is not really about forgetting. Forgetting, as Tacitus knew to his co…
Potior utroque Vespasianus
Damon argues that in Tacitus's Histories, the inclusion of parallel incidents (on a small scale, rather than "must-have" episodes) in two or more principates encourages the reader to measure one princeps against others. This set of comparisons focuses on imperial freedmen awarded extraordinary honours by their emperors, on emperors' attempts to spare their enemies and control key supporters, on the effectiveness (or otherwise) of an emperor in re…
Narrative and Mimesis in the "Idylls" of Theocritus
Relatio Vs. Oratio
Tiberius' speech at the outset of the trial of Cn. Calpurnius Piso, as Tacitus reports it at Annals 3.12, sheds light on two discrepancies between relatio and response in the recently published senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre (hereafter SCPP )
The Trial of Cn. Piso in Tacitus' Annals and the Senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre
The Trial of Cn. Piso in Tacitus’ Annals and the Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre: New Light on Narrative Technique Cynthia Damon In writing the narrative of Germanicus’ death and Piso’s trial in Annals 2 and 3 Tacitus produced, in the estimation of two distinguished and perceptive Taciteans, “a text of unresolved ambiguity.” For Woodman and Martin, Tacitus’ achievement is the more striking when contrasted with the “monotonous confidence” of…
Choices
The narratives that we call Caesar’s Gallic Warand Civil Warwere spoken of by his contemporaries as the “records of his achievements.” The term here translated as “records” is commentarii(its singular form is commentarius). The word itself contains a reference to memory (the root -men-, also present in mention, memento, comment and, contracted, in amnesia), and our translation reflects the word’s etymology. The ancient evidence allows us to arriv…
Mastering Victory
The three preceding chapters explored Caesar’s literary achievement in the Civil Warin terms of genre, structure, and characterization, and began to place the work in its contexts both literary and political. This chapter looks at how Caesar presents himself to his contemporaries through his text. The focus is not on what he says about himself and his virtues—his superiority to Pompey as general, for example, which was treated in chapter 3—but on…
Writing Fighting War
Cicero, discussing Caesar’s Gallic Warcommentaries in a work on rhetoric and Latin style, made the general comment, “They really must be thought excellent. For they are naked and lovely, with every oratorical ornament stripped away like clothing. For in history nothing is sweeter than a pure and clear brevity” (Brutus262). In the preceding chapters we have seen Caesar’s style at work constructing arguments and offering an interpretation of people…
Structure as Argument in Civil War 1
In this chapter we argue that in book 1 of the Civil WarCaesar uses the commentary form for a new purpose. Caesar’s seven Gallic Warcommentaries have a consistent year-by-year structure and appear to function as reports to senators and others in Rome about Caesar’s achievements in Gaul. They offered a picture of Caesar the general and Caesar the man who brings order and civilization to the chaotic and warring provinces, but these political and rh…
Timeline of the Life of Caesar and the Civil War
Subject Ancient Roman History Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Preliminary Note
Subject Ancient Roman History Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Prominent Persons
Subject Ancient Roman History Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Title Pages
Editor’s Foreword
Subject Ancient Roman History Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Maps
Subject Ancient Roman History Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Taking Sides, Making Sides
Characterization in a civil war narrative is more important, and more difficult, than it is in a colonial narrative, such as the Gallic War, of “us” against “them.” When the principal combatants are all Roman and all members of the governing elite, the difference between “us” and “them” needs careful delineation. But drawing the lines is complicated when the composition of the two parties shifts over time, as it did in dramatic fashion after the …
Epilogue
Subject Ancient Roman History Textual Criticism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online
Constructing a Narrative
This chapter contains section titled: The Sources Source Criticism Conclusion
Potior utroque Vespasianus
Damon argues that in Tacitus's Histories, the inclusion of parallel incidents (on a small scale, rather than "must-have" episodes) in two or more principates encourages the reader to measure one princeps against others. This set of comparisons focuses on imperial freedmen awarded extraordinary honours by their emperors, on emperors' attempts to spare their enemies and control key supporters, on the effectiveness (or otherwise) of an emperor in re…
Caesar’s Civil War
Caesar's Civil War is an unfinished masterpiece. It was abandoned by an author who found himself living in a different world than that which saw its commencement. A snapshot of the late republic, it offers a vivid and detailed account of the troubled Roman empire near the turn to the common era. In it, Caesar recounts his break with the Senate and general Pompey and narrates the events of the nineteen months of civil war that followed. It ends af…
Rhetoric and Historiography
The Art of Forgetting
Reviewed by: The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture Cynthia Damon Harriet I. Flower . The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture. Studies in the History of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xxiv + 400 pp. 75 black-and-white ills. 1 map. Cloth. $59.95. Despite its title, this book is not really about forgetting. Forgetting, as Tacitus knew to his co…
Chapter Thirteen. The Mind Of An Ass And The Impudence Of A Dog
Apion, the scholar of the title, was a first-century CE success story. His sobriquet cymbalum mundi ?the world?s gong?, for example, was bestowed upon him by the emperor Tiberius. This chapter looks at Apion?s life and reputation. It gives consideration to his philological work. The scant and discordant remains of his five-book account of Egypt require a more thorough discussion. The chapter addresses the question of why the ancient reputation of…
The Historian's Presence, or, There and Back Again
This chapter is an investigation of a Tacitean metaphor for historiography and its implications for the historian's role in history. The metaphor of the historian's physical proximity to his subject matter, which is found in the Annals 4 digression contrasting Tacitus's work with that of historians of earlier periods, is an offshoot of the enargeia that often enlivens a narrative. It is also one of the many connections between this digression and…
Quid Tibi Ego Videor in Epistulis? Cicero’s Verecundia
Intestinum Scelus
This chapter examines Tacitus' representation of the legacy of civil war in his history of the Julio‐Claudian period, the Annals, arguing that civil war persists during the pax Augusta as a kind of banalization of state violence against citizens, a political system that consumes its own. It studies Tacitus' multi‐episode account of Nero's paranoid, possibly cynical, and ultimately self‐defeating appropriation of civil war exempla to motivate the …
Chapter Three. Too Close? Historian And Poet In The Apocolocyntosis
According to the author, whatever scholarly box we try to put the Apocolocyntosis into, it escapes to show readers a new facet. This chapter tries to catch the glint of one such facet: the deformation and defamation of historiography, so striking in a satire on the deification of an emperor who fancied himself a historian. It focuses on historiography, but the rather extensive set of parallel passages considered in the chapter perhaps permits ext…
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