Dr Matthew Robinson: List of publications

This article presents the first modern exploration of the relationship between Ovid's Fasti and the Catasterismi attributed to Eratosthenes. It argues that mythological handbooks such as the Catasterismi would have been familiar not only to Ovid but also his readers, and that as such they should be considered as potential intertexts. An examination of this intertextual relationship between the Fasti and the Catasterismi shows how in his first extended star myths Ovid raises the politically sensitive question of how to populate his heavens and how, after teasing his reader with Aratean order and justice, he embraces the chaotic and uncertain world of the Catasterismi. © 2013 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

In this article I begin by comparing and contrasting our reading practice regarding acrostics with our practice regarding allusions and intertexts, looking in particular at the problematic notion of authorial intention; I suggest an approach that assumes that ancient learned readers were on the look-out for acrostics, just as they were for allusions, and that they would test them for significance (as we imagine they did for allusions). I then apply this approach to the beginning and end of the Aeneid, and the beginning of the Metamorphoses, exploring how our reading of these well-studied passages changes if we pay attention to the acrostics and telestics that this process unearths. I note among other things how the presence of ILUS, of ARMA and a man, and of a Horatian MUS and a Vergilian ERATO can enrich our reading of the text. I close with an old and particularly controversial acrostic in Eclogue 4 (CACATA) that presents a potential challenge to my approach.