What is it about?
This article studies the traditions and cultural messaging of refusals (recusationes) in a Roman context, positing connections between the refusals of poets to take on projects that they regard as too grand for their talents, and too taxing, to the refusals of emperors who declined excessive powers as means of performing their commitment to republican ideals of governance.
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Why is it important?
The article concerns not only the cultural work that is done by refusals in a Roman context, it concerns the way in which Callimachean poetic values are received into the structures of Roman thought.
Perspectives
This is the first of several studies (both published and forthcoming) that I have written on the cultural configuration of Roman poetic theory and criticism.
Kirk Freudenburg
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This page is a summary of: Recusatioas Political Theatre: Horace's Letter to Augustus, The Journal of Roman Studies, February 2014, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s007543581300124x.
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