The Genius of Things : genius rei in Latin Literature and Culture

Kachuck, Aaron [UCL]

This paper presents the history and historiography of the genius red, the genius of things, in Latin literature and Roman culture. It discusses the evidence for such a notion in DServius, and in the texts form which DServius seems to have put together such a notion (including from Virgil's Aeneid itself, but also various antiquarian traditions). Having shown the poverty of the notion of genius rei in DServius' text, it then takes certain elements of this description to begin afresh and from the texts of Latin literature themselves to assemble a taxonomy for discussing what could be described as a kind of genius of things, or inner life of object (or certain objects), in Latin literature, with examples drawn from Plautus and the late antique Plautine tradition, Horace, and Virgil's Aeneid.