Translatio facta: Pomponius Porphyrio on the Comprehension and Production of Metaphors

The paper argues that Pomponius Porphyrio, as an educated and learned grammarian, was aware of the various concepts of metaphor as a linguistic and/or conceptual phenomenon in Republican and Imperial Rome, even if in his commentary on Horace’s poetic work, he confuses the terms and uses them in a practical and implicative way. The aim, therefore, is twofold: to discuss Porphyrio’s concept of metaphor and his use of the terminology in relation to its use and function in Horace with his brief remarks on the use of metaphor in Horace, commenting on a particularly bold poet with a variety of innovative metaphors, but more importantly to discuss Porphyrio’s place in the history of debates about the linguistic and conceptual function of metaphor in ancient and especially Roman thought.