Tonnes Bekker-Nielsen

Jesper Carlsen

Karsten Friis-Jensen

Vincent Gabrielsen

Gudrun Haastrup

Classica et Mediaevalia is an international periodical with articles written by Danish and foreign scholars. They are mainly published in English, but sometimes in French and German as well. From a philological point of view, the periodical deals with Classical Antiquity in general and topics such as history of law, philosophy, and medieval ecclesiastic history. It covers the period from Greek-Roman Antiquity until the Late Middle Ages. Contents include: 'Reflecting (In)Justice' in the Republic's Line and Cave: Thrasymachus and Plato's Level of eikasia * Quorum in the People's Assembly in Classical Athens * Nektanebo in the Vita Aesopi and in Other Narratives * Chalcidian Politicians and Rome between 208 and 168 BC * Rewriting Dido: Ovid, Vergil and the Epistula Didonis ad Aeneam (AL 71 SB) * Seneca on Platonic Apatheia * Octavia and Renaissance Tragedy from Trissino to Shakespeare * A Dramatic Afterlife: The Byzantines on Ancient Drama and Its Authors * Nine Unidentified Verses in the

Classica Et Mediaevalia

Else Mundal

Jon Gunnar Jørgensen

Saxo og Snorre

Ole Thomsen

Minna Skafte Jensen

Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen

Classica Et Mediaevalia vol.51

A Medieval Author Between Norse and Latin Culture

Saxo Grammaticus

Saxo was probably a canon of Lund Cathedral, at that period a Danish cathedral, and lived at the end of the twelfth century. He was in the service of Archbishop Absalon, who encouraged him to write a history of his own country from the beginnings up to his own time, with a strong Christian bias. Starting with the myths and heroic tales of primitive Scandinavia, he devoted the first nine of his sixteen books to legendary material before dealing with the first kings of the Viking age and finished in 1285, after relating the earlier exploits of King Cnut Valdemarsson. The activities of the Danish kings were intimately bound up with the monarchies of Norway and Sweden; Cnut the Great, one of Saxo's heroes, whose empire stretched as far as Britain and Iceland, was ruler of both these countries. In the last books Saxo took particular concern to describe the campaigns of Valdemar the Great and his warrior archbishop, Absalon, against the Wends of North Germany. The work is a prosimetrum, that is, in six of the first nine books he inserts poems, which are intended to parallel specimens of old Danish heroic poetry in Latin metres. Saxo's Latin prose style is often complex, based as it is on models like Valerius Maximus and Martianus Capella, but he is a lively and compelling story-teller, often displaying a rather sly sense of humour, and an interest in the supernatural. He is the first author to give a full account of Hamlet, whose adventures he relates at some length, the elements of which in a great many respects correspond surprisingly closely with the characters and incidents of Shakespeare's play. Volume I of Saxo Grammaticus contains an introduction from the editor, and the first ten books of Saxo's work.

Gesta Danorum

Karsten Friis-Jensen

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