The Divine Spark of Syracuse. Ingrid D. Rowland. The Mandel Lectures in the Humanities. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2019. xxviii + 126 pp. + 16 color pls. $19.95.
and complicated pieces of literature accessible to nonspecialist readers in effective ways. While, undoubtedly, much of the stylistic flair and artistic playfulness can never be adequately translated, Paul Gwynne’s highly readable prose version preserves the content and the urgency of Benci’s fast-paced narrative. As a reader not trained in the classical tradition, I found Gwynne’s commentary to be a helpful addition to his English text. While Gwynn devotes some attention to basic historical events, most of his remarks (398–681) pertain to matters of style. He provides detailed references to parallel passages in ancient epics in addition to highlighting more-recent poetic production that Benci would have been familiar with. This allows even nonspecialist readers to appreciate the playfulness and wit of Benci’s poetry. Situating a readable translation within a detailed network of classical and post-classical references seems, to this reader, to be an effective way of bringing nonspecialist readers as close to the original text as possible. Jesuit Neo-Latin poetry seems to be one of the few remaining frontiers of Jesuit scholarship. It is under-studied yet fascinating. It is also full of peculiar challenges, not least linguistically. But with masterful presentations of Jesuit Latin poetry such as this, it is now possible for Benci—and, hopefully soon, a range of other equally important authors—to become more prominent among Jesuit scholars.