Some aspects of the ‘elegiac movement’ in a late antique epigram: the 'Dido Bobiensis'

peer reviewedThe aim of this paper is to analyse the elegiac framework of Epigr. Bob. 45, a fascinating epigram in the collection of the Epigrammata Bobiensia, which may be briefly described as “Dido’s palinode”, and in which the Carthaginian queen retracts her earlier sentiments and clarifies that she has, in fact, never met Aeneas. The epigram in question belongs to the literary genre of ecphrastic poetry, as I have argued elsewhere (see «Sileno», 41/1-2, 2015, pp. 277-304). The present study is divided into four sections: (1) the Latin text of the carmen with a critical apparatus, (2) the interpretative paradigms of Ovid and Vergil, (3) the influence of Propertius on the author of the epigram as shown through three examples taken from Book 4 of Propertius’ elegies, and (4) the analysis of the ‘inscriptional intermediality’ of this poem. My intention is to show, first, how the ‘genre epigram’ is an open rhetorical system and, second, that it is possible, as a result of this openness , not only to recognize in Epigr. Bob. 45 an ‘elegiac movement’ (to paraphrase slightly Antonio La Penna’s famous definition about the “epigrammatic movement and rhythm in Propertius’ elegies”) but also to delineate the different ways in which the various literary models I have discussed previously were re-codified in the late antique literary culture