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This paper addresses what is arguably the single most important question for contemporary studies of ancient religion: can we imagine a critical language for analysing ancient polytheisms without retrojecting onto them modern theological categories?

This paper will argue that the sublimated pressure of theological concerns is present as early as the fifth century, and even in a writer long considered the poster child of late paganism, Macrobius.

Augustan poetry (and Vergil’s Aeneid in particular) has been thoroughly located in
its historical context in recent scholarship, but the historical contexts of the Aeneid’s
descendants have often been undervalued when their intertexts with Vergil’s work
are discussed. While the Silvae are often read as products of the dynamic between
the poet and Domitian (Newlands 2010), studies of the Thebaid’s politics have
focused on anxieties around succession (Rebeggiani 2013, Rosati 1990) rather than

In the de Rerum Natura, Lucretius describes his mission in terms of dispelling the shadows of ignorance that cloud human knowledge and bring fear to the minds of men (DRN 1.146-7). His account, he tells us, is designed to reveal what has true value in the contemporary world. In this, Lucretius’ philosopher-hero, Epicurus, provides the guiding light that will push through the dark boundaries of human ignorance: e tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen/ qui primus potuisti inlustrans commoda vitae (DRN 3.1-2).

The Massilian grove in book three of Lucan’s Bellum Civile contains many preternatural elements that present a haunting place, a true locus horridus (Schiesaro 2006). Among these elements are serpents twining around the trunks of trees and hollow, echoing subterranean caverns. The grove is a sublime object: dark, terrifying, and obscure (Day 2013, Leigh 2010). Its gloom and mysterious nature are reminiscent of the ambiguous perception of caves (Ustinova 2009), themselves dark and obscure places.

Stephen Hinds, in the aptly titled “Ovid’s Aeneid (and Virgil’s Metamorphoses),” suggests that Ovid’s recognition of a “Metamorphoses latent in the Aeneid” fuels his self-conscious attempt to gather, perfect, and systematize the myths presented by Vergil (Hinds 1998).

The Theognostos Archive (see P. J. Sijpesteijn, “Theognostos alias Moros and His Family,” ZPE 76, 1989, 213–218, and the introduction to P.Bagnall 56) is a set of documents from Hermopolis in Middle Egypt from the late second and early third century. The “membership card” of the imperial organization of athletes once belonging to Hermeinos, an older brother of Theognostos, is the best known (Pap.Agon. 6).

This presentation tackles head-on Richlin’s reading of rape scenes in Ovid’s Metamorphoses – her argument that the poet’s coupling of violence and sexuality could be explained by the savage aggression to which Romans were exposed in the arena and by the opportunities for sexual abuse available to Roman men in a slave-culture. The panelist argues that on the contrary Ovid’s descriptions need not be read as normalizing rape but are, rather, part of the poem’s complex but deeply radical dissection and critique of Augustan Rome’s association of violence with sexuality.

This presentation focuses on two aspects of Richlin’s work as it has shaped the historiography of Roman women. First, focusing on three chapters in Arguments with Silence – the first (adultery in Rome), the second (satirical invective against Roman women), and the eighth (Pliny the Elder and folk remedies) – she examines how Richlin’s reading of the literary sources has affected historians who must use these sources to write the history of ancient women, separating discourse from social realities.

This presenter is a young specialist in Roman social history deeply influenced by Richlin’s work, especially by her audacia in bringing topics such as obscenity in Roman invective or rape narratives to the center of academic discussions. In her work on Roman women and religion, Richlin searches for information from largely ignored sources such as Festus’ dictionary and Italian inscriptions outside Rome, fruitfully combining them with comparative material from other disciplines.