Hosidius Geta’s Cento Medea: Vergilian Tragedy or Tragedy against Vergil?

Vergilius. 2015. Vol. 61. P. 131–156.

Shumilin M.

Contemporary scholarship generally reads allusion in Hosidius Geta's second-century AD cento Medea as modeled on the technique of learned allusions, meant to appeal to the reader's sophistication. I suggest an alternative reading of allusion and therefore also of meaning in Medea. The allusive play that we can reliably recognize in Hosidius' Medea is, on my reading, quite democratic: it requires rather little from the reader's memory, as it creates largely tonal contrasts between Vergilian words and the new (often brutal) senses wuth which Hosidius imbues them.

Keywords: late antiquity, Vergil