Philip Hardie, 'Toyboys and emperors. Another look at Ganymede'

This paper was originally prompted by my disagreement with Michael Putnam over the Aen. 5 ecphrasis when reviewing his recent book. What it's grown into is a close reading of the passage (5.249-57) as an illustration of some of the themes and approaches of recent Virgilian criticism - ecphrasis, point of view, (historical) allegory, mise en abyme, erotics. I have tried to contextualise it in such a way as to give a feel for the wider history of recent Virgilian criticism. In terms of my own work, I suppose in a way it's a return to the 'Fascist' (as some had it!) Tendenz of Cosmos and Imperium, but revisited after my exposure to a lot of other things in the meantime.