The Ciris has received a certain amount of scholarly attention during the twentieth century, but on the whole has failed to meet with an adequate appreciation. This book aims to vindicate the Ciris, mainly by exploring its use of pre-Virgilian poetic texts largely ignored in previous scholarship. The core of the book consists of a discursive literary commentary, divided into chapters that examine consecutively the poem's main narrative units. Viewing allusion and allegory as intrinsic features of poetic composition rather than mere artistic devices, the book explores, among more prominent intertexts, Apollonius' Argonautica and Callimachus' Hecale, Lucretius and Catullus 64. Allusions are also suggested to Homer and Empedocles, Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion, Nicander and Euphorion, Choerilus of Samos and Asius of Samos, Ennius and Cicero. Through its intricate web of references to poetic intertexts, the Ciris, it is argued, creates an implicit allegorical pattern with an original poetological message. Allusion and Allegory is thus the first book-length study to offer a coherent literary interpretation of this controversial poem.

This volume offers the first comprehensive literary and philological commentary on the Lydia, in any language. At its core is a freshly edited Latin text of the poem, which systematically reconsiders the paradosis as well as earlier textual scholarship and endorses numerous improvements against current editions. Besides scrutinizing all the textual problems and adopted solutions, the commentary provides a thorough linguistic exegesis of the text as well as a wide-ranging discussion of the poem's rich intertextuality, both Latin and Greek. The Lydia's literary side is also the main focus in the introduction, which challenges the established communis opinio that views the Lydia as a dateless anonymous imitation of Virgilian bucolic, by situating it in the literary context of the Late Republic: it highlights, for the first time, the centrality of Greek bucolic, in particular of Bion's Lament for Adonis and the anonymous Lament for Bion, in the Lydia's literary genealogy and tentatively revives the old attribution to Valerius Cato, as well as exploring the poem's relationship with its better-known sibling, the Dirae. The work is complete with an English translation, aimed to serve as a guide to the Latin text for readers without a solid background in the ancient language.