Divinities and Acrostics in Ovid, Claudian and Dracontius

MARRÓN, GABRIELA ANDREA

Actividad desarrollada bajo formato virtual

Congreso; International Colloquium on Intertextuality in Latin Literature; 2023

Universidad Nacional do Paraná (Brasil), Universidad Estatal de Campinas (Brasil), e Instituto de Humanidades CONICET de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina)

At the beginning of De raptu Proserpinae, Claudian uses the phrase adventum testata dei (v.9) to explain that the temple’s radiance testifies the arrival of a god; different critics have identified this god with Ceres, Iacchus, Phoebus and even with the divine in the general sense. Given the context, the phrase undoubtedly reminds Hecate’s arrival when Aeneas and the Sibyl enter the underworld (adventante dea, Verg. Aen. 6, 258), but in lexical terms it also rewrites an Ovidian verse, where Janus explains that the engraved ship on the coins exchanged in New Year testifies Saturn’s arrival to Latium (hospitis adventum testificata dei, Ov. fast. 1, 240). Later, in his epic version of Medea’s story, Dracontius quotes Claudian’s phrase to introduce the reaction of nature to Cupid’s arrival in Colchis (adventum testata dei, Drac. Romul. 10, 175); and he also alludes to a verse close to that one in Claudian’s same poem (ebria Maeonius firmat vestigia thyrsus, Claud. rapt. 1, 19), but in this case to introduce the subsequent arrival of Bacchus to Aeetes’ kingdom (ebria pampineis miscens vestigia thyrsis, Drac. Romul. 10, 275). In our presentation we will try to show that, with these two allusions, Dracontius seems to have rejected the syncretic fusion of Iacchus and the God of Isaac, suggested by an up to now unnoticed acrostic of Claudian’s poem (Claud. rapt. 1, 7-11), and to have also pointed out a sequence of intertextual allusions to acrostics possibly related with it.