Tag Archives: Imagery

Bokelmann’s shade

Posted on April 13, 2017 by Peter Kruschwitz

I am in North Frisia right now, spending a few days by the North Sea shore with my son. I fell in love with this primordial landscape when I was a child myself (rather longer ago than I care to … Continue reading →

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Leap Day Harmony

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Peter Kruschwitz

Vergil‘s eighth Eclogue is a remarkable text. It presents a ‘song battle’ between Damon and Alphesiboeus, two pastoral poets, whose poetry is described in supernatural terms (Verg. ecl. 8.1-5, transl. H. R. Fairclough): Pastorum musam Damonis et Alphesiboei, immemor herbarum … Continue reading →

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Let us remember that this has happened

Posted on December 12, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

After the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A. D., most of the Iberian peninsula eventually became part of the Visigothic Kingdom. A successor state to the (Western) Roman Empire, the Visigoths had gained control over Rome’s … Continue reading →

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War, Combat Trauma, and Poetry: Evidence for PTSD in the Latin Verse Inscriptions?

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

In my previous blog post, I introduced a text that provides an (albeit anecdotal) unusual view on the Roman army, its drill, its effectiveness, and the dehumanising, romanticising narratives that prevail around it. The further one delves into the world … Continue reading →

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Fruit of the Doom: an Image of Life, Death, and Letting Go in Roman Poetry

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

Death has been on my mind lately, having recently learnt of the untimely passing of two of my colleagues at the University of Reading. Whether death was imminent or came suddenly, whether it hits the old or the young – … Continue reading →

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And the Owl doesn’t care…

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

The internet is a strange place – full of the most wondrous things and inspiration. Over the last year, I have published a number of blog posts to do with (mostly poetic) memorials for dogs in the Roman world – … Continue reading →

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What have the Syrians ever done for us…?

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

Things are difficult – and not particularly cheerful – at the moment. The so-called migrant crisis, the barbarism of ISIS troops in Syria and elsewhere, the humanitarian and fiscal crisis of Greece, Europe’s politicians’ utter inability to defend the human(e)ly … Continue reading →

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More Than Meets the Eye: Fragrance, Sensuousness, and Inscribed Latin Poetry

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

When we talk about ‘reading’ and ‘Latin poetry’ in academic contexts, we often tend to reduce complex intellectual and sensuous processes to a fairly linear model by which a text, either by acoustic or by optic means, somehow enters the … Continue reading →

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Departure, Abandonment, and Grief: Latin Poems about Death in Childbirth

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the poem for a Roman lap-dog named Margarita (‘Pearl’), whose splendid inscription I managed to visit in the British museum. The text of the inscription – moving, personal, and affectionate – has … Continue reading →

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Poverty and the Poetics of Underclass Morality

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Peter Kruschwitz

Is there a direct (inversely proportional) relation between (desired) material wealth and morality? The author of the first pseudo-Sallustian letter to Caesar appears to think so ([Sall.] epist. 1.7.3-9; transl. J. C. Rolfe): But by far the greatest blessing which … Continue reading →

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