Jared Hudson - The Rhetoric of Roman Transportation: Vehicles in Latin Literature

The Rhetoric of Roman Transportation

Latin literature is crowded with portraits of Romans in transit, but despite this ubiquity scholars have been reluctant to read vehicles as significant conveyors of textual and cultural meaning. This book offers the first systematic analysis of the representation of Roman vehicles in Latin literary texts. By moving past approaches that count such vehicular portrayals as either transparent glimpses of reality or soaring poetic symbols, it demonstrates how these conveyances work as a system of representation to structure both the texts in which they appear and underlying cultural discourses surrounding power, gender, and empire. Arranged as a series of interlocking studies, each chapter explores the representation of a particular conveyance across author and text, from the humblest and most quotidian ( plaustrum ) to the most exalted and symbol-laden ( currus ).

Jared Hudson is an Associate Professor of the Classics at Harvard University, Massachusetts.

The Rhetoric of Roman Transportation

Vehicles in Latin Literature

Jared Hudson

Harvard University, Massachusetts

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108481762

DOI: 10.1017/9781108667678

Jared Hudson 2021

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First published 2021

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-108-48176-2 Hardback

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Now there being no travelling through France and Italy without a chaise and nature generally prompting us to the thing we are fittest for, I walkd out into the coach yard to buy or hire something of that kind to my purpose: an old Desobligeant in the furthest corner of the court, hit my fancy at first sight, so I instantly got into it, and finding it in tolerable harmony with my feelings I drew the taffeta curtain and being determined to write my journey, I took out my pen and ink, and wrote the preface to it in the Desobligeant.

L. Sterne, A Sentimental Journey

Like most long trips, however solitary or self-powered they may seem, this one has only been possible with the help and support of others. It is a pleasure to thank some of the people and institutions that have helped me cover much ground in the writing of this book. Without John Henderson, a most inspiring teacher, writer, reader, and interlocutor, I would never have set out. I am very grateful to the Classics Department at the University of California, Berkeley, to John Ferrari, Mark Griffith, Leslie Kurke, Tony Long, Donald Mastronarde, Kathy McCarthy, Charles Murgia, Trevor Murphy, and above all to Nelly Oliensis, Maurizio Bettini, and Dylan Sailor, who guided my dissertation, helping me find its path and complete the first leg of its journey. Nelly saw where I was going (long before I did), and has helped and inspired me with her brilliant example all along the way. Reinvigorating stopovers at the Centro Antropologia e Mondo Antico in the Universit degli Studi di Siena (thanks to Maurizio Bettini), at Kings College, Cambridge (thanks to John Henderson), and Trinity Universitys Classical Studies Department (thanks to Erwin Cook, Nicolle Hirschfeld, Tom Jenkins, Tim OSullivan, and Corinne Pache), all helped the project pick up speed. Colleagues, staff, and students in the Department of the Classics at Harvard University have helped me in numerous ways and, in particular, I am grateful to Kathy Coleman, Richard Thomas, and Naomi Weiss for providing valuable support, advice, and encouragement. I have had the opportunity to share some of the ideas in this book at Stanford, UCLA, Indiana University, UC Davis, Kings College London, and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, and I am grateful to my hosts and audiences for stimulating thoughts and questions. Tim OSullivan, Kathy Coleman, and John Henderson provided encouraging and bracing comments on earlier drafts. The book has been greatly improved by the incisive and constructive feedback of the anonymous readers for the Press. I thank Michael Sharp, who has been extraordinarily helpful in guiding the book to publication, and Caroline Morley, Neena Maheen, and Lesley Hay for their invaluable assistance. I am grateful to the University of California Press and Oxford University Press for permission to include material appearing in, respectively, Carpento Certe : Conveying Gender in Roman Transportation, ( Classical Antiquity 35.2, 2016) and Obviam : The Space of Vehiculation in Latin Literature ( in The Production of Space in Latin Literature , ed. W. Fitzgerald and E. Spentzou, 2018). BART, ATAC, AC Transit, SFMTA, and MBTA helped me go in directions that I could never have predicted. I am thankful most of all to my friends and family, especially to Justine and John, Mary and Jim, Warner, and Anne; to Eliot, who has shared his love of vehicles with me, and taught me so much about them; but above all to Hannah, who has gone to enormous lengths in helping me to carry the weight of this book since we set off together. I dedicate it to her.

Abbreviations for Latin and Greek references follow the Oxford Classical Dictionary (4th edn.), or, for those not included in it, the Oxford Latin Dictionary or LSJ . All quotations are taken from the most recent Oxford Classical Texts, and all translations are mine, unless otherwise noted.

First, a tale about one Roman on the way and another who gets in the way: