ARATORIS HISTORIA APOSTOLICA. LIBRO PRIMO: TRADUZIONE E COMMENTO

My Ph.D. dissertation analyzes from a philological and literary point of view the first book of Arator’s Historia Apostolica, a biblical epos about Peter and Paul based on the Acts of the Apostles. In the first chapter I study Arator’s letters to pope Vigilius, Florianus and Parthenius and the public reading carried out by the poet in 544 A.D., in order to investigate his historical background and his aims. In the second part of my work the reader will find the Latin text with the apparatus fontium, while in the third one I submit my personal Italian translation of the first book. Finally, in the last chapter, I illustrate the subjects and the stilistic-rhetoric strategies used by Arator: the examples reported show that he often alludes to some well-known passages of Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, Statius and other pagans or Christian Latin poets, as well as to some prose works of Augustin, Ambrose an so on. Some of these poetic references are involuntary recollections of expressions studied during his education, while others are voluntary allusions. In the latter case, Arator usually wants either to relate to the original content or to say something completely different by using the same linguistic pattern. An appendix with a list of manuscripts containing Arator’s works comes at the end of this thesis.