A new edition and commentary on the pseudo-virgilian dirae
DIRAE is an action designed to explore the Dirae, a largely neglected anonymous Latin poem, probably from the first century B.C. Transmitted as part of the so-called Appendix Vergiliana, it is among the most corrupt Latin poetic texts surviving from antiquity. Being anonymous and of uncertain date of composition (in fact, it may consist of two separate poems, possibly by different authors), the poem lacks secure links to a specific context of production. DIRAE aims to bring the Dirae within the orbit of current classical scholarship by creating a set of fundamental and innovative research tools: a comprehensive philological and literary commentary, and an open-access digital critical edition. The core objective of the action is to reconstruct the poem’s text by employing a wide range of research measures, from fresh inspection of all primary sources and thorough use of earlier textual scholarship to conjectural emendation. In addition to solving textual issues, the commentary will explore the Dirae’s complex intertextuality with other poetry, both Latin and Greek. A minute analysis of linguistic, metrical and literary features will aim to establish the poem’s context of composition, to answer the question of unity (if not authorship), and to uncover its implicit poetic programme. DIRAE’s research outputs will include the publication of a commentary in monograph form and the creation of an open- access web resource hosting a digital edition of the poem accompanied by a comprehensive repertory of conjectures and a collection of digital images of all primary manuscripts. While the commentary can be expected to become the standard reference work for all subsequent research on the Dirae, the impact of the digital edition will potentially be even wider: being one of the first of its kind, it can serve as a model for future digital critical editions of classical authors.