Anser (poet)

Anser was a poet of ancient Rome who lived in the 1st century BCE. He was a friend of the triumvir Mark Antony, and one of the detractors of Virgil. He wrote in an indelicate or unserious style.[1] Ovid calls him procax, an adjective meaning "shameless" or "impudent".[2][3][4][5][6]

Some scholars have suggested that Anser is the same man who is elsewhere referred to as Lycidas, and that "Anser" is a pseudonym for this poet writing unserious work. ("Anser" is Latin for "goose".[7]) Other scholars—even if they do not identify "Anser" with Lycidas—question whether there was ever a person who was actually named "Anser", or whether it was just a generic dismissal of a bad poet.[8] The 4th-century grammarian Servius asserts that "Anser" was indeed a specific person with that name, but he is the only source who makes this claim unambiguously, and was writing several centuries after Anser was said to have lived.[9]

Notes
  1. Freund, William; Riddle, Joseph Esmond (1866). A Copious and Critical Latin-English Dictionary. Sheldon.
  2. Virgil, Eclogues ix. 36
  3. Prop. ii. 25. 84
  4. Ovid, Tristia ii. 435
  5. Cicero, Philippicae xiii. 5
  6. Weichert, Poetar. Lat. Reliquiae, p. 160, &c., Lips. 1830.
  7. Karakasis, Evangelos (2011). Song Exchange in Roman Pastoral. Trends in classics. 5. Walter de Gruyter. p. 199. ISBN 3110227061. ISSN 1868-4785.
  8. Peirano, Irene (2012). The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context. Cambridge University Press. p. 110. ISBN 9781139560382.
  9. Maurus Servius Honoratus, Commentary on Virgil vii. 21

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William (1870). "Anser". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. p. 181.


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