Hosidius Geta ( ; fl. late 2nd – early 3rd century AD) was a
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of Roman civilization
*Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...
playwright.
Tertullian
Tertullian (; ; 155 – 220 AD) was a prolific Early Christianity, early Christian author from Roman Carthage, Carthage in the Africa (Roman province), Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive co ...
refers to him as his contemporary in the ''De Prescriptione Haereticorum''.
Geta was the author of a tragedy in 462 verses titled ''Medea''. It is the earliest known example of a Virgilian
cento
Cento (; Bolognese dialect, Northern Bolognese: ; Bolognese dialect, City Bolognese: ; Bolognese dialect, Centese: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy.
History
The name Cento is a reference to the centur ...
, that is, a poem constructed entirely out of lines and half-lines from the works of
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...
. The poet used Virgilian
hexameters
Hexameter is a Metre (poetry), metrical Line (poetry), line of verses consisting of six metrical foot, feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English language, English line of poetry; in Greek language, Greek as well as i ...
for the spoken parts of the play, and half-hexameters for the choral parts.
Bibliography
*Text edited by R. Lamacchia, ''Medea. Cento Vergilianus'' (Teubner, 1981)
*Text, Translation, and Commentary by Maria Teresa Galli
atin-Italian with English Summaries Vertumnus. Berliner Beiträge zur Klassischen Philologie und zu ihren Nachbargebieten, vol. 10, Göttingen: Edition Ruprecht 2017,
Sources
*
Further reading
*Anke Rondholz. ''The Versatile Needle: Hosidius Geta’s Cento “Medea” and Its Tradition.'' 1st ed. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. doi:10.1515/9783110283860.
*Philip Hardie, "Polyphony or Babel? Hosidius Geta's Medea and the poetics of the cento," in Simon Swain, Stephen Harrison and
Jas Elsner (eds), ''Severan culture'' (Cambridge, CUP, 2007).
*Scott C. McGill, "Tragic Vergil: rewriting Vergil as a tragedy in the Cento « Medea »," ''Classical World'' 95 (2001–2002) 143–161.
*Giovanni Salanitro, "Osidio Geta e la poesia centonaria," ''ANRW'' 2.34.3: 2314–2360.
*N. Dane, "The Medea of Hosidius Geta," ''Classical Journal'' 46 (1950) 75–78.
Ancient Roman tragic dramatists
Year of birth unknown
Year of death unknown
Hosidii
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