Acrostics

The article presents the results of the search regarding the epithet Logothetes used with the name of the renowned fifteenth-century hagiographer and hymnographer Pachomius the Serb in texts stating his authorship, his signatures, and acrostics found in his works or texts that he copied. The data show that Pachomius used this epithet only in signing his early works — the Panegyric of Barlaam of Khutyn and two canons of the Service for the icon of Our Lady of the Sign, all composed at the end of the 1430s in Novgorod. This makes unlikely the previously suggested connection of this epithet with Pachomius’s fame as a writer or his work as a chronicler. The most plausible interpretation is that it designated some office held by Pachomius, as proposed by A. Turilov. However, the time when and the place where these works were composed suggest that it might not be an office in the service of Patriarch Nikon of Peć in Serbia, but some office at the service of Archbishop of Novgorod Euthymius II or Metropolitan of Kiev Isidore. The hypothesis of Pachomius’s connection with Isidore allows us to explain how he made the acquaintance of Euthymius II and received commissions from him to write texts for the important Novgorodian religious feasts, and also the dropping of this epithet later on. The article is supplemented by tables presenting all currently known Pachomius’s signatures and acrostics and examples of signatures found in texts attributed to Pachomius but not known in author’s manuscripts.

Horace’s Epist. 1.7 poses notoriously difficult problems about the author’s relationship with Maecenas. This article proposes that we identify the Calaber hospes of v. 14 with Augustus, and that the entire poem be understood as an implicit comparison between Maecenas and the master of Rome.

The book of Lamentations has been noted in biblical scholarship for its peculiar acrostic structure, a feature which makes the book unique in the OT in terms of style and literary unity. Taking inspiration from the possible meaning(s) of this structure, coupled with a detailed analysis of the central verses (vv. 22-24) of the middle poem (Lam 3), this author seeks to juxtapose the beacon of hope in the midst of lament for the destruction of Jerusalem with the experience of the Nigerian nation in the wake of religio-political terrorism and chronic system failure. God’s proofs of mercy (ḥeseḏ) and respect for law and (acrostic) order are put forward in the final analysis as divine and human panacea, just like faith and reason, in rekindling the light of hope for the nation.

A monograph on Old Polish visual and conceptual poetry (16th to 18th century). Annotated bibliography of all known visual poems with reproductions. Fist chaoters cover ancient and medieval visual poetry, with more attention given to the renaissance reception and flourishing of the genre in Europe.

В статье рассматривается ряд формальных литературных приемов, основанных на математических закономерностях. Эти приемы предложили и (или) практиковали участники французской группы "УЛИПО", основанной Раймоном Кено и Франсуа Ле Лионне. В статье обсуждается необходимость формальных ограничений для литературного творчества. - Опубликовано в журнале "Новое литературное обозрение", 57 (2002), cc.246-270.

This is an updated paper, using the material from the chapter in my book - Ambrosius Aurelianus and the Apocalypse of King Arthur, on the discovery of the acrostic in De Excido. Thanks to David Howlett, Alex Wolf and Keith Fitzpatrick-Mathews for our discussions concerning the original paper. Due to its significance I am publishing this paper to explain how I made the discovery, the form it takes, the sources Gildas used for the acrostic from Jerome’s Vulgate and Rufinus, and incarnation dates embedded in all of the material.

This paper studies the treatment of the Sibyl and Virgil in a speech attributed to Constantine the Great. Scholars generally focus on the role played by one or the other of these two figures in that writing. To do justice to the economy of the work, it seems necessary to keep them together. As a result, the Sibyl and Virgil serve as pagan counterparts to the witnesses of Moses and Daniel about the divinity of the Crucified. A prophetess initially attached to Apollinian oracular centers, the Sibyl becomes a prophetess of the one Christian God. That is illustrated by the famous acrostic poem Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour Cross that she is said to have uttered. As for Virgil, it is through the exegesis of the Fourth Eclogue, of which several verses are glossed and translated into Greek, that he is also Christianised.


Cet article étudie le traitement réservé à la Sibylle et à Virgile dans un discours attribué à l’empereur Constantin. La recherche s’interroge habituellement sur le rôle et la place de l’une ou l’autre des deux figures dans cet écrit. Pour rendre justice à l’économie de l’œuvre, il semble préférable de les tenir ensemble. Il en ressort que la Sibylle et Virgile servent de contreparties païennes aux témoignages de Moïse et Daniel sur la divinité du Crucifié. De prophétesse rattachée à des centres oraculaires apolliniens, la Sibylle devient prophétesse du seul vrai Dieu des chrétiens, ce qu’illustre le célèbre acrostiche Jésus Christ Fils de Dieu Sauveur Croix qu’elle aurait prononcé. Quant à Virgile, c’est par l’exégèse de la Quatrième Églogue, dont plusieurs vers sont glosés et traduits en grec, qu’il est lui aussi christianisé.

This paper argues that Ovid deliberately arranged lines 3.507–10 of the Ars Amatoria to have the letters at line end spell out AMOR when read vertically. Together with the last word of the passage, which is itself Amor, this telestich produces a shape that recalls a famous Γ-acrostic in Aratus. Since the relevant Ovidian lines discuss mirrors, they also constitute an invitation to read AMOR backwards as ROMA. The telestich thus emerges as engaging intertextually with a variety of plays on the city's name, including the famous AMOR-ROMA word squares that are preserved in Imperial Roman graffiti. Within the mildly subversive genre of elegy, Ovid's palindromic word play creates a contrast between traditional expressions of Roman military valor—familiar from works like the Aeneid, where an acrostic significantly spells out MARS—and his own world, where the city of ROMA has come to be dominated by AMOR.

For Christian literature the name of the first human being has an allegorical interpretation of profound significance. Many auctors observe that the four letters of the name Adam represent the initials of the Greek words for the four cardinal points: Ἀνατολή, Δύσις, Ἄρκτος e Μεσημβρία and thus comprehended the whole world. Only Ps.-Cyprian, Augustine, Beda, Primasius, Amalarius, Rabanus Maurus, Honorius of Autun, Garnerius of Langres and Sicardus of Cremona adduce as further evidence for the universal significance of the name the fact that in Greek the numerical values of the letters A + D + A + M come to a total of 46 (1 + 4 + 1 + 40), the number of years taken to build the temple at Jerusalem, which symbolises the Christ’s body. Then this article provides a pragmatic analysis of relation between the acrostic ADAM and the numerical symbology.

This is the Introduction to a book draft on the theme of gematria (and other numerical techniques) and acrostic techniques in the Hebrew bible, especially the Psalms.

Revised version uploaded 13 June 2019. (Corrections and additions on pages 25-26),

Responding to recent scholarship which discounts apparent traces of an alphabetic acrostic in Nahum 1 as purely coincidental, this essay argues that earlier scholarship was right to detect a tendency towards an alphabetic acrostic in Nahum 1. But while previously the disruptions to the alphabetic sequence were considered an imperfection caused by lack of concern on the part of the poet or a later redactor or as the result of copying mistakes in the transmission of the text, I suggest that the tendency towards an acrostic and the irregularities belong to a single purposeful design. This design communicates a message of disrupted order and fits well with the remainder of the book of Nahum.

Les Fanfreluches antidotées de Rabelais et l'Énigme de Mellin de Saint-Gelais, organiquement liées, dissimulent des anagrammes en acrostiche soulignant l'énoncé des poèmes. D'autre part, sur les vingt anagrammes en acrostiche découvertes, pas moins de sept semblent désigner Paolo Giovio, qui serait également brocardé dans les poèmes par de nombreux traits le caractérisant.

Published version available here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-quarterly/article/looking-edgeways-pursuing-acrostics-in-ovid-and-virgil/269DC39A17ADB2BBC6E7916EE8235D89/share/1912470be86a9432b51addd60c477fe5f3c254c0

The article available for download on Academia.edu is the prepublication version.

In the article I propose a reading practice whereby we actively seek out acrostics in the same way that we actively seek out allusions. I then apply this approach to the key moments in the Aeneid and Metamorphoses, and find it to be a productive one, revealing several new acrostics and telestics, and shedding light on some previously discovered ones. These include an Ovidian authorial signature NASO in telestic form at the moment that Amor is introduced in the Metamorphoses; the acrostic NITIDO in the middle of the Metamorphoses, picking up on the opening of Book 8 and continuing Ovid's competitive engagement in the Met with Horace's Ars Poetica; the acrostic AUSUM in a middle (there are several) of the Aeneid, looking back to the use of audeo and its cognates to describe Vergil's scholarly activity in the Georgics; Vergil's reproduction of Aratus' LEPTE acrostic (and an ARATEA anagram) in his own mini-cosmos, the Shield of Aeneas, at a moment of intense metapoetic self-reference; and two acrostic links between Dido, Lavinia and Ajax and their shared sense of shame.

In this chapter, I examine the figure of Dido’s sister Anna in the Aeneid. While some scholars have speculated that Ovid fabricated the connection of Anna and Anna Perenna in his treatment of the goddess in his section on the Ides of March in the Fasti, I argue that Vergil is aware of and engages with the tradition that Anna becomes the Roman goddess. One of the ways in which Vergil suggests the association of Anna with Anna Perenna is through his marked use of the word lympha, which can mean “nymph” or “water” in Latin. In Ovid’s Fasti, Anna Perenna is referred to as a nympha, and the archaeological evidence strongly suggests that Anna Perenna would be thought of as a nympha. In addition, Vergil’s Anna shares many of the amorous qualities of the water nymph, and there is an acrostic in Book 4 that may hint at Anna’s divine identity. This association has greater implications for the epic as a whole since it suggests a stronger parallelism between Anna and Juturna (since they are both water nymphs), and thus between Turnus and Dido.

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.

Part I of this study argued that Aratus’s decision to base his LEPTĒ acrostic, which occurs during a discussion of moonlight (Phaen. 783-87), on Homer’s LEUKĒ acrostic (Il. 24.1-5) was motivated by the connection in Homer between the adjective λευκός and various types of light from the sky, including the light of dawn, which appears shortly after the acrostic (Il. 24.12), and the light of the moon (Il. 23.455). In Part II, I argue that a study of the reception of Aratus’s acrostic in Greek and Latin poetry reveals that many ancient poets solved the “riddle” of how Aratus’s acrostic relates to Homer’s.

This article argues that the acrostic LUCE in Lucretius, De rerum natura 5.712-15, which occurs during discussion of the light of the moon, is intentional and engages with Homer’s LEUKĒ acrostic (Il. 24.1-5) and Aratus’ LEPTĒ acrostic (Phaen. 783-87). Lucretius uses the LUCE acrostic, as well as Aratus-inspired name-play in the surrounding lines, to reflect on his poetic relationship to Homer and Aratus and his philosophical relationship to Epicurus.

In the first seven lines of his opening proem, where we notoriously find a Hymn to Venus, Lucretius compensates the Muses with an invocative Muse-telestich spelling MuSAS/MuSIS, which is signposted by caeli … labentia signa and thus connected to the Aratean tradition of both heavenly and written “signs”. Moreover, Lucretius’ telestich establishes a firm tradition including (so far) Catullus, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, who mark some of their most emphatic—predominantly, but not exclusively, proemial—passages with variants of the Lucretian Muse-telestich and adjust them to their respective poetic programs. The Muse-telestich thus became a textual device by which Latin poets watermarked their highest poetic aspirations in exceedingly creative ways.

This article identifies and analyses the presence of an imperfect thematic acrostic
(iamata-iamatura) in the Virgilian passage dedicated to the introduction of the figures
Amata and Lavinia in the Aeneid (Aen. vii 53-57). I first discuss the acrostic’s thematic relevance,
focusing on the reason for its defective form, before turning to its internal structure
and relevance within the larger section of the text in which it is found (vii 37-57).

This paper reveals a SuAVIS acrostic at Catullus 14.19–23 by which Catullus, at the end of poem 14, might provide a variation on his initial address to Calvus (iucundissime Calve, 14.2), suggesting that his invective did not change the initially announced “sweetness” of the addressee. The acrostic – which seems to be involved in a sophisticated web of allusions – may reinforce what every reader of poem 14 feels: this invective is rather a friendly joke.

In this article, I argue that Vergil’s vatic announcement MAius oPUs moVEo in the symbolic middle of his epic (Aen. 7.45, the closure of the invocation to Erato) should be read as containing the poet’s signature “Ma(ro)-Pu(blius)-Ve(rgilius)”. This authorial signature, as I suggest, may evoke not only the famous “Ma-Ve-Pu” acrostic in the Georgics, but further Vergilian acrostics and signatures as well.

Le deuxième volet de cette enquête fait la lumière sur le «beau Juppin» du Tiers Livre qui «testiculos non habet». Il se poursuit avec l'aveu même de Paolo Giovio, qui se compare au castor qui s'arrache les génitoires, puis par divers échos disséminés en relation avec l'«émasculation» de Giovio.

In Aen. 8.685 hinc ope barbarica variisque Antonius armis Vergil describes Marc Antony’s forces at
Actium. Here variisque, found in all the extant manuscripts, has been suspected by some scholars and Niklaas
Heinsius proposed the correction Phariisque (‘Egyptian’). His conjecture, however, although elegant and very
close to the transmitted text, failed to persuade. The proposal has on the contrary strong evidence, not yet
adduced, to support it. According to Octavian's official propaganda and in order to remove the idea of civil war,
Vergil describes the battle as a war between Rome and a foreign enemy, Egypt (as can be gathered from vv. 696,
where Cleopatra leads the fleet with the sistrum, 698-700, where Egyptian theriomorphic gods, and especially
latrator Anubis, face Olympic gods, or 711-3, where the Nilus, pictured as a river-god, offers shelter to the
losers). Furthermore, the depiction of Actium’s battle on the shield owes much to Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos
and particularly to Apollo's second prophecy (vv. 171-90), which prefigures Ptolemy II’s defeat of the Gauls in
278 B.C.; in Aen. 8.685 Vergil imitates closely Del. 172 s. οἱ μὲν ἐφ’ Ἑλλήνεσσι μάχαιραν / βαρβαρικὴν καὶ
Κελτὸν ἀναστήσαντες Ἄρηα. Especially noteworthy is the dicolon μάχαιραν / βαρβαρικὴν καὶ Κελτὸν ...
Ἄρηα, paralleled by Vergil’s ope barbarica variisque ... armis, and the alliteration between the last two words
(ἀναστήσαντες Ἄρηα ~ Antonius armis). In Callimachus the rare βαρβαρικός is variated by the ethnic Κελτός,
which strongly supports Pharius in Vergil. Finally, Flavian poets (Martial, Valerius Flaccus and Statius),
indipendently of each other, imitate Vergil’s verse, showing that they read Phariisque there.

This article examines two orthographic features in the Acrostic Hymn of Nebuchadnezzar II. It aims to show that the text makes use of the possibilities of the cuneiform writing system to create various levels of meaning. The first example clarifies structure and content with regard to a difficult passage in the fourth and last stanza of the text, in which a possible change of actors is indicated by an orthographic feature. The second example shows how orthography is used in the first stanza of the text to augment its message. These examples demonstrate how structural elements and micro-features such as orthography were used creatively to enhance the message of the hymn.

The topic of this paper is a remarkable case of bilingualism: the use of Latin acrostics in Hungarian Renaissance poetry. During the 16th century the acrostic (in its special form called ‘acrostrophe’) had an astonishingly important role in this literary tradition: about one third of the poems contains acrostics. They were the most popular rhetorical device used to link strophes to each other, with the claim to maintain their order during the history of textual transmission, and also to state the rights of the author on his/her poem. According to our reconstruction of the evolution of the acrostic, its frequent use is caused by the close relationship between Hungarian and Latin literature, the Latin education of rhetoric in 15–16th century schools – as Latin acrostics preceded in time Hungarian ones – and probably by authors who were too proud of their knowledge of Latin to hide it. The spread of the acrostic has an additional reason: the general popularity of anaphoric structures in Hungarian poetry in its earliest examples that may be based on the influence of Latin religious poetry.

This paper presents two notes relating to Jason’s prayer to Apollo before the launch of the Argo in Apollonius’ Argonautica (1.415–419). In both cases, I examine what may be termed the “subtextual” facets of the passage: textual data that are significant—productive of meaningful interpretation—and yet hardly apparent on a surface-level reading of the poem. The first note concerns the changing total number of crewmembers aboard the Argo, an evolving figure which Apollonius encourages the reader to track as the narrative progresses. The second proposes a new acrostic that “completes” the ΑΚΤΙΑ acrostic that Selina Stewart recently discovered in Jason’s prayer. In each case, I draw different conclusions from these subliminal data, which have ramifications for questions of gender and inclusivity in Jason’s crew and the role of the gods in the poem. Both readings, however, are a testament to the careful design and unity of purpose that runs through the epic.

Ce document se situe en marge de la découverte d’acrostiches dans Les fanfreluches antidotées de Gargantua. Il révèle l'emprunt du premier de ces acrostiches pour le premier emblème de la Morosophie de Guillaume de La Perrière, ouvrage paru l'année de la mort de Rabelais et dont le titre est probablement inspiré du Tiers Livre.

Eine bestimmte Form der kontroversen Poesie entsteht dann, wenn Dichter einen militärischen Konflikt zum Thema ihrer Werke erheben. Ein besonderer Korpus dieser Art von Gedichten entstand in der ungarischen Literatur des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, in der eine wichtige Gattung, das Berichtslied, allein den türkisch-ungarischen Kriegen gewidmet war. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Parallelen und Unterschiede innerhalb dieser Gattung—die insbesondere im Oeuvre des Dichters und Liederkomponisten Sebastian Tinódi (ca. 1510–1556) vertreten war—und die zeitgenössischen deutschen und italienischen Kriegsgedichte. Indem die deutschen “Ereignislieder” und die italienischen Cantari, die sich alle mit den Kriegen gegen die Türken beschäftigen, und einige ungarische Gedichte derselben Periode genauer studiert und miteinander verglichen werden, wird die Validität der Hypothese, dass das “historische Lied” oder das “Ereignislied” ein paneuropäisches literarisches Phänomen sei, überprüft. Der Beitrag soll außerdem die charakteristischen Merkmale der Lieder aufzeigen, die sich innerhalb der spezifischen nationalen Literaturen des fünfzehnten und sechzehnten Jahrhunderts mit den Kriegsereignissen beschäftigen. Abschließend wird gefolgert, dass direkte deutsche und italienische Einflüsse auf die ungarische Lyrik jener Zeit zwar sehr wahrscheinlich sind, aber dass diese Gattung vor allem vom eigenen, formalen Erbe nationaler poetischer Traditionen abhängt. Dies kann aufgrund einiger besonderer Charakteristika der ungarischen, deutschen und italienischen Berichtlieder überzeugend aufgezeigt werden, obwohl aktuelle Theorien die Identität einer solchen Gattung über Zeiten und Grenzen hinweg zu erkennen versuchen.

The article incorporates an edition and translation of an extraordinary Latin poem by Fray Cristóbal Cabrera, a humanist scholar and Franciscan missionary who worked in New Spain from the early 1530s until 1546–1547. The Ecstasis, the longest acrostic composition in western literature, is a first-person fiction, reminiscent of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, in which the poet describes an apocalyptic vision of judgement and his slide into madness after an earlier premonition that God’s wrath would fall upon Mexico City. The poet professes to reject pagan literature but his sustained engagement with several classical authors, especially Catullus, Virgil and Cicero, provides a key to the interpretation of this enigmatic work.

Dubellay s'en prend à Ronsard, avec l'arme que celui-ci décochait à un critique inconnu. Cette arme : un acrostiche grec, renversé comme la flèche du Parthe.
Dubellay lashes out at Ronsard, by means of an greek acrostic, to be read from the bottom up. Ronsard used the same weapon a few years before, against an unnamed adversary.  Some Greek acrostics are like Parthian arrows.

When we read Virgil's famous epitaph, we automatically give the phrase Calabri rapuere a figurative meaning. Based on a contextual study of the words Calaber and rapere, as well as an examination of the rhythmic structure of the epitaph, this article argues that the phrase should be taken literally.