Methodological potential of the analysis of some prosodic exempla of imitatio to Cicero in the late antique rhetorician Favonius Eulogius

Abstract

The commentary to the Somnium penned by the little known late antique rhetorician Favonius Eulogius is a precious resource in the study of Latin literature of the classical and post-classical periods. This due not only to its content-focused exegesis, driven by mythopoetic and arithmologic concerns drawn from Ciceronian cosmology; but also because of the attention to intertextuality and allusion, very much part of the intellectual climate of its time both in terms of its philosophical framework and its rhetorical focus—a rhetoric whose canons it aims to imitate in both general and specifically prosodic terms. The instrumental use of Ciceronian clausulae is here put to work to promote the wording of technical-rhetorical dissertations and the literary references interweaved in its reading of the much-celebrated ending of Cicero’s De Republica.