What follows is an experiment in reading practice. I propose that we read some key passages of theAeneidand theMetamorphosesin the active pursuit of acrostics and telestics, just as we have been accustomed to read them in the active pursuit of allusions and intertexts; and that we do so with the same willingness to make sense of what we find. The measure of success of this reading practice will be the extent to which our understanding of these familiar and well-studied texts (...) can be usefully enriched by our interpretation of our discoveries (or rediscoveries). These will include an undiscovered authorial signature NASO in the ‘second proem’ of theMetamorphoses; an unnoticed self-referential response to Horace with NITIDO at the centre of Ovid's epic and a similarly self-referential AVSVM at the centre of Virgil's epic; in theAeneidwe will also find glances to Aratus with LEPTE and an Aratean anagram on Aeneas’ shield; and two new acrostics connecting Dido, Ajax and Lavinia. (shrink)

That Cicero as a young didactic poet embraced the traditions of Hellenistic hexameter poetry is well recognized. Those traditions encompass various forms of wordplay, one of which is the acrostic. Cicero's engagement with this tradition, in the form of an unusual Greek-Latin acrostic at Aratea 317–20, prompts inquiry regarding both the use of the acrostic technique as textual commentary and Cicero's lifelong concerns regarding translation.

Hunters of acrostics have had little luck with Horace. Despite his manifest love of complex wordplay, virtuoso metrical tricks and even alphabet games, acrostics seem largely absent from Horace's poetry. The few that have been sniffed out in recent years are, with one notable exception, either fractured and incomplete—the postulatedPINN-inCarm.4.2.1–4 (pinnis?Pindarus?)—or disappointingly low-stakes; suggestions of acrostics are largely confined to theOdesalone. Besides diverging from the long-standing Roman obsession with literary acrostics, Horace's apparent lack of interest is especially surprising given that (...) Virgil, his contemporary, friend and ‘poetic pace-maker’, was at the time conducting what seems to be a systematic adaptation of Hellenistic acrostic-poetics into Latin poetry. (shrink)