Homer in Stone: The Tabulae Iliacae in their Roman Context

Description

The Tabulae Iliacae are a group of carved stone plaques created in the context of early Imperial Rome that use miniature images and text to retell stories from Greek myth and history - chief among them Homer's Iliad and the fall of Troy. In this book, Professor Petrain moves beyond the narrow focus on the literary and iconographic sources of the Tabulae that has characterized earlier scholarship. Drawing on ancient and modern theories of narrative, he explores instead how the tablets transfer the Troy saga across both medium and culture as they create a system of visual storytelling that relies on the values and viewing habits of Roman viewers. The book comprehensively situates the tablets in the urban fabric of Augustan Rome. New photographs of the tablets, together with re-editions and translations of key inscriptions, offer a new, clearer view of these remarkable documents of the Roman appropriation of Greek epic.

David Petrain received his PhD in Classical Philology from the Department of the Classics at Harvard University, Massachusetts. He is a scholar of Greek and Latin language and literature with expertise in the art and material culture of ancient Rome. His articles about ancient poetry and other texts written on papyrus or inscribed in stone have appeared in the Transactions of the American Philological Association, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, and Mnemosyne. His co-edited volume, The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry (with Jan Kwapisz and Mikolaj Szymanski), was published in 2012.

'... this is an instructive and rewarding study of a topic that can seem abstruse and that has endangered controversy. ... Given this work's clear presentation of evidence, balance of iconographic and literary interpretation, and lucid argument, I would advise scholars new to the topic to start with it first.' Jonathon Burgess, The Classical Journal 'The book is handsomely produced and well-illustrated, with few typographical errors; the two appendices provide an invaluable conspectus of the iconography and inscriptions on all the known Tabulae. Petrain has done a great deal to advance the study of these perplexing and intriguing objects, and all scholars of the Roman reception of Greek culture will learn much from his superb monograph.' Thomas R. Keith, Bryn Mawr Classical Review