Poetic Invectives. Strategies to Justify Verbal Aggression in the Latin Poetry of the Late Republic and Early Imperial Period

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dennis Pausch
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 557853891

Latin poetry contains a large number of attacks on individuals or social groups, criticising them for misconduct, but at the same time also disparaging and exposing them. The lyrical-epigrammatic texts of Catullus and Martial and the epodes of Horace are particularly relevant, as are the satires also written by Horace as well as by Persius and Juvenal. The offensive and often socially exclusionary character of these passages is increasingly perceived today as aggressive and in need of explanation, especially when these attacks are directed against less privileged members of Roman society (such as women, slaves or immigrants) and against minorities of all kinds (e.g. with regard to sexual orientation). In contrast, the Roman Republic in particular seems to have been characterised by maximum freedom of speech and criticism. However, a closer look at the legal and cultural circumstances and the debates conducted by contemporaries suggests that the associated verbal violence always constituted a breach of taboo in Rome too and that it was therefore necessary to make the offensive character of invective texts appear less offensive or justified and that a rich arsenal of literary techniques developed for this purpose. While some of the relevant techniques have long been the focus of research, other forms have received less attention and, above all, have rarely been analysed across genres and epochs. It is precisely this comparative approach in two respects that should therefore form an important starting point for the project described here. In fact, the inscription of the individual texts in a genre tradition with invective licences (e.g. satire, iambic, mock-epigram) already represents an important legitimation strategy that should by no means be adopted unquestioningly. The well-known difficulties in defining the relevant genres and describing their development are probably related not least to the fact that these self-assignments are (even less than usual) no objective classifications, but are strongly intentional. In order to take this problem into account, the texts will be summarised here under the more neutral generic term of poetic invective. A better understanding and a more precise description of these individual techniques and their interplay therefore form the central aim of the project presented here. At the same time, however, the consequences of their successful application in the relevant texts for our image of the social acceptance of invective poetry in antiquity will also be analysed, not least with regard to the falsifying effect that these legitimation strategies probably had.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants