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This article presents ancient Roman texts dealing with the topic of same-sex weddings with the purpose of examining the reliability of these sources and contributing to the understanding of this element of the ancient tradition. In order to do so, this paper takes literary and historiographical sources and legal aspects into consideration, making use of research by Craig Williams, Bruce Frier, and Michael Fontaine. Apart from a Late Imperial constitutio, our most important sources are historiographical works on two emperors of scandalous reign, namely Nero and Elagabalus; Juvenal's Satire 2; and two epigrams by Martial: 1, 24 and 12, 42. In the closing section of the paper, I suggest a new interpretation for the punchline of the latter poem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expressions such as 'misogyny' and 'anti-feminist' appear again and again in papers dealing with Juvenal's almost 700-line-long Satire 6, where they are used not only to describe the text itself, but also its narrator and, in some cases, the poet himself. Accordingly, the misogynistic disposition of Satire 6 is a well-discussed feature of the poem. To (re)examine this question, I approach the text by focusing on the targets of the invective - that is, the women listed as deterrent examples for the addressee Postumus - and by comparing the Juvenalian narrator's attitude towards women to the treatment of homosexuals and foreigners in the Satires in order to prove that while Satire 6 has strong misogynistic features, the Juvenalian narrator cannot and should not be considered as a misogynistic character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No general agreement has yet been reached about the meaning and purpose of Plato's Menexenus. Two mutually exclusive readings have generally been given: Socrates' funeral oration could be either a parody and a satire of Athens' funeral speeches or an example of better, idealistic, maybe even philosophically grounded rhetoric. However, the problem does not only come from the dichotomy present in most scholars' works. It lies, instead, in the ambiguity of the text itself. This paper aims to clarify the serious implications that parody can have. Exemplarity and parody, irony and seriousness should not be considered as mutually exclusive because an imitation that seriously demonstrates how easy it is to write a good epitaph can be understood as a form of parody. In fact, Plato's Menexenus seems to be a school manifesto: it recalls Callicles' charges against the educational value of philosophical practices (Grg. 484c-485d). Therefore, it may be directed against Isocrates' conception of rhetoric as related to education and politics. The mention of the Peace of Antalcidas (245c) will then prove the topical and thus political character of this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the relation between Juvenal and Quintilian is still unanswered: the reconstruction of their possible biographical and literary connections is very uncertain. The Life of Juvenal does not mention Quintilian; its author only states that Juvenal spent a signifi- cant part of his life declaiming. Their personal acquaintance is not confirmed by any ancient source, and the views of modern research are not univocal either; however, most scholars leave the question undecided. On the grounds of the biographical data, it cannot even be proven with certainty that Juvenal known Quintilian, thus we have to find evidence in the texts of the two authors. In this paper, I examine the possible influence of Quintilian on Juvenal's Satires, highlight textual and thematic parallels as well as common motifs in order to unfold the relation between the two authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The atypical rhythm of the versus spondiacus was used by some Greek and Latin poets to draw attention of the readers. Juvenal makes use of spondeiazon 34 times which puts him in the top three of Roman poets applying this metre in their poetry. The aim to this paper is to answer the question whether Juvenal makes use of the spondaic verse due to specific reasons, and, if so, in what manner these reasons are connected to the author's poetical intentions concerning epic as genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Since the beginning of the first satire, Juvenal has rejected the use of epic as being too exploitable and too inefficient to describe the monstrosity of the Roman vice. Yet the epic allusions crosses all satire. The paper deals with the idea that the functions of the epic elements in the first satire, often being erroneously restricted to a decorative (i.e. mocking) one, are in a stringent manner connected with Juvenal's choice of satire as genre. The paper shows how Juvenal transfers epic foundings on the ground of the satire and how he uses them to form his programmatic principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the reading of preserved fragments, the author deals with the question whether Lucilius wrote verses belonging to the genre of satire. According to the quantity of fragments (approximately 1,300) and the rare preservation of complete verses, the author suggests dividing the fragments into several groups. The author tried to find a literary criterion which takes into account the features typical of the genre of satire and is also understandable to contemporary readers. The presence of criticism has been chosen as such a criterion which, in the author's opinion, has been found along with satire from its beginnings to the present. It is one of the most typical features of satire. In the second part of the paper, the author presents a group of chosen satirical fragments which is divided according to the focus of the criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]