(DOC) Gibson Collected Papers Roman Epistolography

The Gallo-Roman aristocrat, bishop, poet, and letter writer Sidonius Apollinaris extensively uses literary allusions throughout his corpus. Scholarship has long recognised Sidonius’s clear reuse of Pliny the Younger’s programmatic remarks in his own programmatic epistles. Sidonius additionally uses micro allusions, which rely on one or two suitably recherché words, to create significant literary connections in these important epistles. This article analyses Sidonius’s micro allusions to Pliny's Epistulae I.5, IX.26 and Virgil's Ecloga VIII. It argues that these allusions assist Sidonius's efforts to project his paideia as the Latin West transitioned into the barbarian successor kingdoms and the traditional markers of the Gallo-Roman elite, such as wealth and rank became harder to maintain.

In late C.E. 467 Sidonius Apollinaris journeyed from Lyon to Rome. An account of his journey appears in Ep. 1.5. Sidonius made his way to the city by boat and imperial post horses, arriving during the nuptial celebrations of the Emperor Anthemius’ daughter Alypia and the barbarian potentate Ricimer. This article argues that Sidonius uses carefully considered literary allusions to texts that bemoan war, in Italy especially, to express his own concern regarding the political climate, specifically that the political union of Ricimer and Anthemius, confirmed by the marriage, will not provide the stability needed for the western Roman Empire.

Roy Gibson, Collected Papers on Roman Epistolography On Roman epistolography (2007), (with A. Morrison), ‘What is a Letter? Letters and Literature’ in R. Morello and A. Morrison (eds.), Ancient Letters (Oxford University Press), 1-16 (2012). ‘On the nature of ancient letter collections’, Journal of Roman Studies 102: 56-78 (2012). ‘Letters into Autobiography: The Generic Mobility of the Ancient Letter Collection’, in T.D. Papanghelis, S.J. Harrison, S. Frangoulidis (eds.), Generic Interfaces in Latin Literature (Berlin and Boston), 387-416. (2023) ‘Patterns of Arrangement in Greco-Roman letter collections: 400 BCE – 400 CE’, in S. Facione (ed.), Concatenantur sibi epistulae nostrae. (unpublished). ‘Tardiness, Anarchy, and the Problem of Cicero: Latin Letter Collections from the First Century B.C. to Late Antiquity’ Cicero and Ovid (2010) (with C. Steel), ‘The indistinct literary careers of Cicero and Pliny the Younger’ in P. Hardie and H. Moore (eds.), Classical Literary Careers and their Reception (CUP), 118-37 (2018). ‘The Epistulae Heroidum and the epistolographical tradition’, in P. Fedeli and G.P. Rosati (eds.), Ovidio 2017. Prospettive per il terzo millennio (Teramo), 215-35 (2022). ‘The Pro Marcello without Caesar: grief, exile and death in Cicero, Ad Familiares 4’, Hermathena 101.105-46 Pliny the Younger (2003). ‘Pliny and the art of (in)offensive self-praise’ in R. Morello and R. Gibson (eds.), Re-imagining Pliny the Younger: Arethusa 36.2.235-5 (2011), ‘Elder and Better: Pliny the Elder and the letters of Pliny the Younger’ in R. Gibson and R. Morello (eds.), Pliny the Elder: Themes and Contexts (Brill, Leiden), 187-205 (2014) ‘Suetonius and the uiri illustres of Pliny the Younger’, in T.J. Power and R.K. Gibson (eds.), Suetonius the Biographer: Studies in Roman Lives (Oxford), 199-230 (2014) ‘Starting with the index in Pliny’, in L. Jansen (ed.), The Roman Paratext: Frame, Text, Readers (Cambridge), 33-55 (2015) ‘Not dark yet … Reading to the end of Pliny’s nine book collection’, in I. Marchesi (ed.), Pliny as Bookmaker: Betting on Posterity (Oxford), 185-222 (2016) ‘Readers and readings of Pliny’s Epistles’ (with C.L. Whitton), in Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: the Epistles of Pliny the Younger (Oxford), 1-48 (2018). ‘Pliny and Plutarch’s practical ethics: a newly rediscovered dialogue’, in A. König and C.L. Whitton (eds.), Literary Interactions under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian (CUP), 402-21 (2022). ‘Calpurnia of Comum and the ghost of Umbria: marriage and regional identity in the Epistulae of Pliny’, in L. Galli Milic and A. Stoehr Monjou (eds.), Beyond the Epithalamis: Marriage in Latin Literature (Brepols) (2023) ‘Intertextuality in Pliny, Epistles 6’, in M. Neger and S. Tzounakas (eds.), Absorbing Genres in Letters: Intertextual Studies in Pliny’s Epistles (2023) ‘Fact and fiction in Pliny’s Epistles: the Augustan Poetry Book and its Legacies’, in C.R. Jackson and J. Soldo (eds.), res vera, res ficta: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography Sidonius Apollinaris and Pliny (2011). ‘Clarus confirmed? Pliny, Epistles 1.1 and Sidonius Apollinaris’, Classical Quarterly 61: 655-9 (2013). ‘Pliny and the letters of Sidonius: from Constantius and Clarus to Firminus and Fuscus’ in B.J. Gibson and R.D. Rees (eds.), Pliny in Late Antiquity: Arethusa 46.2.333-335 (2013) ‘Reading the letters of Sidonius and Pliny the Younger by the book’ in J. van Waarden and G. Kelly (eds.), New Approaches to Sidonius Apollinaris (Leuven), 195-219 (2020). ‘Sidonius and epistolography’, in J. van Waarden and G. Kelly (eds.), A Companion to Sidonius Apollinaris (Edinburgh), 373-92

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Gibson Collected Papers Roman Epistolography

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Gibson Collected Papers Roman Epistolography

Gibson Collected Papers Roman Epistolography

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