Seehäfen in der lyrischen Dichtung Roms zwischen später Republik und früher Kaiserzeit

Abstract

This contribution undertakes to shed light on three facets: To begin with, the use of the seaport motif in Roman lyrical poetry of the two centuries around the birth of Christ covers a complex and variegated associative spectrum of human feeling. Within that spectrum, aspects such as protection, refuge or the end of a journey by no means always have positive connotations. What is more, the motif is assigned different functions from one genre to the next. It can serve as a multiply utilizable mirror of the author’s own literary production or of personal sensitivities with regard to interpersonal relationships or biographical crises. And it is a device used as much in praise of the times and the emperor as for the purposes of indignant cultural and social criticism. Finally, relationships to non-lyrical literary text types become evident, particularly with regard to prose literature of a historiographical, rhetorical and political-philosophical nature. In any case, when viewed from the out-side, the latter suggest a wide range of interdependencies and concretizations above all with regard to contemporary discourses. Late Republican and Early Imperial products and producers of lyrical poetry were thus not only recipients but also active participants in a system of intellectual debate. Within this context, the perception, conception, and literary processing of the maritime constitute a substantial and complex - but at the same time ambiguous analogue - element of the history of the maritime-oriented mentality of antiquity, a history highly complex with regard to form and content alike.