Anser (poet)
Anser was a poet of ancient Rome who lived in the 1st century BCE. He was a friend of the triumvir Mark Antony, and one of the detractors of Virgil. He wrote in an indelicate or unserious style.[1] Ovid calls him procax, an adjective meaning "shameless" or "impudent".[2][3][4][5][6]
Some scholars have suggested that Anser is the same man who is elsewhere referred to as Lycidas, and that "Anser" is a pseudonym for this poet writing unserious work. ("Anser" is Latin for "goose".)[7] Other scholars - even if they do not identify "Anser" with Lycidas - question whether there was ever a person who was actually named "Anser", or whether it was just a generic dismissal of a bad poet.[8] The 4th century grammarian Servius asserts that "Anser" was indeed a specific person with that name, but he is the only source who makes this claim unambiguously, and was writing several centuries after Anser was said to have lived.[9]
Notes
- ↑ Freund, William; Riddle, Joseph Esmond (1866). A Copious and Critical Latin-English Dictionary. Sheldon.
- ↑ Virgil, Eclogues ix. 36
- ↑ Prop. ii. 25. 84
- ↑ Ovid, Tristia ii. 435
- ↑ Cicero, Philippicae xiii. 5
- ↑ Weichert, Poetar. Lat. Reliquiae, p. 160, &c., Lips. 1830.
- ↑ Karakasis, Evangelos (2011). Song Exchange in Roman Pastoral. Trends in classics. 5. Walter de Gruyter. p. 199. ISBN 3110227061. ISSN 1868-4785.
- ↑ Peirano, Irene (2012). The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context. Cambridge University Press. p. 110. ISBN 9781139560382.
- ↑ Maurus Servius Honoratus, Commentary on Virgil vii. 21
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William (1870). "Anser". In Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. p. 181.