CCS Research Seminar 7
presented in-person and online via Zoom

The Ilias Latina is a Latin version of Homer’s Iliad, in 1070 hexameter verses, likely composed during the reign of Nero (c. AD 60–65). As with all Latin ‘translations’ of Greek poems, it is as much a Roman cultural appropriation of the Iliad as it is a faithful rendition of it. For an early imperial epic-style poem, one might expect Virgil’s Aeneid to be an important intertext – as indeed it is. More surprisingly, perhaps, Ovid looms large across the poem. In particular, the poet of the Ilias Latina makes regular use of summaries of, recollections of, and perspectives on the Trojan war found in Ovid, as they are articulated by either ‘Ovid’ himself or his internal characters. One useful strategy, then, is to read the Ilias Latina as an extended animation of Ovidian snapshots of the Trojan conflict.

Speaker:
Steven Green is Professor of Latin in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore. He specialises in Roman literature and culture in the late republic and early empire, and is particularly interested in those texts that are typically overlooked, unread, or unappreciated by modern readers. For this reason, his research has moved from Ovid to more marginal poems, such as the astrological treatise of Manilius, the hunting manual of Grattius, and now a Latin poetic version of Homer’s Iliad, on which he has just completed a detailed commentary (OUP 2025).