Roman Epic Theatre? Reception, performance, and the poet in Virgil's Aeneid

Abstract

Past responses to ancient literature and the reading practices of previous centuries are of central relevance to the contemporary exegesis of Greek and Roman authors. Professional classicists have at last come to recognise this. However, accounts of reception still tend to engage in a traditional form of Nachleben , as they unselfconsciously describe the extent of classical influences on later literary production. This process of influence is not as straightforward as it may first seem. It is often taken for granted in practice, if not in theory, that the movement is in one direction only – from antiquity to some later point - and also that the ancient text which ‘impacts on’ on the culture of a later period is the same ancient text that we apprehend today. Of course it is never the same text, even leaving aside the problems of transmission. The interaction between a text and its reception in another place, in another time, in another text, is really a dynamic two-way process. That interaction (which has much in common with intertextuality) involves, or is rather constituted by, our own interpretation of it.