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Statius' incomplete Latin epic, the Achilleid, tells the story of the young Achilles' sojourn on Scyros dressed as a girl, before he goes to Troy. The poem was discounted until recently as a curiosity in the Roman epic tradition, a genre which was theorised to be essentially about martial masculinity (Horace AP 73), despite the fact that women and sexual love feature prominently in actual epics. This paper argues that the Achilleid's complex post-Ovidian representation of gender also bears implications for our understanding of Roman epic as a genre. As Achilles struggles towards his literary destiny as the ultimate Homeric warrior, the poem's allusive exploration of gender ultimately reorients the tense relationship of the epic hero to women and amor, and of the epic genre to its own institutionalised masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the depiction of Clytaemestra and Egistus in the narrative poem of the North African poet, Dracontius. A close reading of the Latin epyllion explores the similarities and differences between this Clytaemestra and Egistus and their representation in the Greek and Roman tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now well known that Vergil exploited this twofold nature of the symbol of the Euphrates masterfully. On the one hand he uses it to refer back to Callimachus and in doing so to state his own views on poetry; on the other hand he invokes the famous river of the East to explain how events there impacts on Rome, her new princeps and ultimately his own capacity to write poetry. Propertius, too, was not insensitive to the possibilities afforded by the symbol of the Euphrates and, having Vergil as an example, could exploit the symbol in much the same way as the illustrious poet. This paper is primarily concerned with how Propertius uses the symbol of the Euphrates to speak about his own poetry and the socio-political circumstances in which he wrote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a satirist, Persius is strongly opposed to the grand themes of epic and tragedy. In the first 29 lines of Satire 5 (cast in the form of a dialogue between the poet and his friend, Cornutus), Persius is mainly concerned with the style and themes of contemporary epic and tragedy (1-9), metaphorically linking the process of contemporary literary production (with special reference to tragic writers) and the consumption of ghastly, cannibalistic banquets dished up by tragic writers and actors. He then justifies his approach to his own poetry and the appropriate style for the satirist (10-29). Although reference will be made in passing to the whole of lines 1-29, this paper will focus on Satire 5:1-9 and 17-18 by discussing the meanings and nuances of key words first and then interpreting each pericope as a unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]