This paper argues for a combined reading of Odes 1.3, the propempticon for Virgil, and Odes 1.22, the Lalage ode. The arrangement of the first book of Odes places 1.3 in structural relation to 1.22; and the appearance of scelus, ‘sin’, in the penultimate verse of 1.3 and the initial line of 1.22 activates a thematic affiliation that has gone unexamined in the scholarship. I take the poet's use of scelus as my starting point, analysing in what follows the ways in which Virgil and Horace are both positioned in the drama of 1.3 as practitioners of scelus of a kind that associates them with Prometheus, Daedalus and Hercules. Then I press the question of how such a depiction makes sense, given the ways in which these mythological exemplars are shown to be transgressors of natural boundaries. I then turn to 1.22 for an answer otherwise not forthcoming in 1.3, where scelus reappears in a poem about the power of song. I argue that the transgression Virgil and Horace practise in 1.3 is poetic composition itself—a sin Horace himself commits in the very odes that dramatise it, but whose staging extols the purity and integrity of a kind of singing that is prior to the concatenation of word, metre and music that go into the composing of any poetry. I see in these odes, then, a meditation on the ways in which poets cross back and forth between a boundary that separates originary song from the polished songs of poetry that it initiates—surely a topic that interested, and vexed, Horace for all of his career, and about which these odes have something fundamental to tell.

The opening poem of Propertius Book 4 famously contains a programmatic statement which presents not amor (love or desire)—the staple of Roman elegy through the 20s and into the 10s BCE—as the ruling theme of the collection, but Roman aetiology:

Roma, faue, tibi surgit opus, date candida ciues
omina, et inceptis dextera cantet auis!
sacra diesque canam et cognomina prisca locorum.
(4.1.67-69)

Rome, lend your support. This work arises for you. Citizens, grant bright
omens—and may the bird of augury sing favourably!
Of rites and days I will sing, and of the ancient names of places.

The focus on Roman origins in poem 1 itself specifically involves a comparison between the early history of Rome (the mythic past) and the poet's present (what we have come to know as ‘Augustan’ Rome). This comparison is introduced in the very opening lines of the poem:

hoc quodcumque uides, hospes, qua maxima Roma est,
ante Phrygem Aenean collis et herba fuit;
atque ubi Nauali stant sacra Palatia Phoebo,
Euandri profugae procubuere boues.
fictilibus creuere deis haec aurea templa,
nec fuit opprobrio facta sine arte casa.
(4.1.1-6)

Whatever you see here, stranger, where now is great Rome,
was hills and grassland before the coming of Phrygian Aeneas.
Where the Palatine shrine of Naval Phoebus now stands,
the cattle of Evander once lay down as refugees.
These golden temples grew from clay gods,
and there was no shame in an artless dwelling.

Anthropologists and sociologists have demonstrated the vital role which myths of origin, such as the poet here purports to represent, play in the formation, maintenance and expression of ethnicity in many cultures, ancient and modern. A.D. Smith even goes so far as to call such myths the sine qua non of ethnic identity. It seems reasonable to suggest, then, that the representation of Roman origins projects Roman identity. Indeed, some scholars have recently argued for this in the case of Propertius Book 4. What is more, as I will argue here, Propertius Book 4 accentuates the complexities inherent in the particular picture of Roman identity which Roman myth transmits, and dramatises them in such ways as to challenge the unitariness of that identity at the very moment of its assertion.

For well over a decade Pliny's Historia Naturalis has been recognised as a work which deals with moral questions and imperial culture as much as (perhaps more than) science and nature. These reassessments of the Elder Pliny move away from the disdainful and anachronistic judgments of his writings as ill-judged, naïve and unscientific, and towards a more productive analysis of the Historia Naturalis' symbolic significance and coherence within its first century Roman context. Mary Beagon finds that Pliny is representative of a particular first century ‘emphasis on humanity and its needs and aspirations’, while commenting that it is at this period that mundus and kosmos (Latin and Greek respectively for ‘world’ or ‘universe’) take on the specific meaning of ‘the inhabited world’. The coherence that Beagon finds in Pliny's work is therefore concentrated around the relationship between nature and humankind. It is this relationship, and the symbolic value given to natural phenomena, which allows so much of the Historia Naturalis to act as a cultural commentary on contemporary society. For example, Beagon, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and Trevor Murphy identify luxuria (‘luxury’) as a key term in Pliny, and insist not only upon his aversion to this concept, but also on his transcendence of the traditional Roman diatribe against decadence and extravagance. For Beagon, Pliny's objection to luxury is partly determined by contemporary political and economic factors, as she claims that Pliny's stance mirrors that of Vespasian, who was attempting to rebuild the state's finances after Nero had squandered them. More particularly, luxuria is the antithesis of uita (‘life’), to the extent that it corrupts and distorts life, leading to passivity and desidia (‘lethargy’)—the exact opposite of the programmatic statement found in the Historia Naturalis Preface 19: uita uigilia est (‘life is being awake’).

In the Punica, Silius Italicus narrates the events of the Second Punic War from the rise of Hannibal and his siege at Saguntum to the rise of Scipio Africanus and his triumph over Carthage. The importance of Scipio in the final books of the Punica is foreshadowed by events earlier in the poem; these early appearances of Scipio emphasise not only his future heroism and divine favour, but also his youth and immaturity. Although a development of his character can be traced through the Punica, the figure of Scipio is complex and contradictory. There are two significant episodes that bring Scipio into the forefront of the epic action—his nekyia in Book 13 and his choice at the crossroads between Virtus and Voluptas in Book 15. These events are critical in understanding Scipio's role in the Punica and as such have already received considerable scholarly attention. My focus will be on Punica 13 and Scipio's trip to the underworld, but rather than analyse this passage in terms of Scipio's development and heroism, I would like to make a number of connections between Punica 13 and passages in the first half of the epic, and, in doing so, suggest a somewhat different reading of Silius' presentation of Scipio that looks back to the disasters leading up to Cannae, rather than ahead to Rome's triumph at the end of the epic. I will begin, therefore, with a discussion of what bearing the structure of the Punica has on its meaning and suggest different uses of symbols and imagery between the two halves of the poem, before turning to Scipio in the second half of the epic.