This book analyses the mythical and legendary narratives in Ovid's Fasti as narrative and concentrates on the neglected literary aspects of these stories. It combines traditional tools of literary criticism with more modern techniques (taken especially from narratology and intertextuality). From a narratological viewpoint it covers important features such as aperture, closure, characterization, internal narrators, description, space, time and cinematic technique. On the intertextual level it examines the narratives' complex relationship with Virgil, Livy and Ovid's own earlier works. Recent criticism on the Fasti has addressed various elements (religious, historical, political, astronomical etc.), but detailed narrative study has been wanting. This book fills that gap, to provide a more informed and balanced appreciation of this multifaceted poem aimed at classicists and literary critics in general (for whom all the Latin is translated).

Recent years have witnessed an increased interest in classical studies in the ways meaning is generated through the medium of intertextuality, namely how different texts of the same or different authors communicate and interact with each other. Attention (although on a lesser scale) has also been paid to the manner in which meaning is produced through interaction between various parts of the same text or body of texts within the overall production of a single author, namely intratextuality. Taking off from the seminal volume on Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations, edited by A. Sharrock / H. Morales (Oxford 2000), which largely sets the theoretical framework for such internal associations within classical texts, this collective volume brings together twenty-seven contributions, written by an international team of experts, exploring the evolution of intratextuality from Late Republic to Late Antiquity across a wide range of authors, genres and historical periods. Of particular interest are also the combined instances of intra- and intertextual poetics as well as the way in which intratextuality in Latin literature draws on reading practices and critical methods already theorized and operative in Greek antiquity.

After a period of neglect, Ovid's elegiac poem on the Roman calendar has been the focus of much recent scholarship. In her comprehensive and scholarly study of the final book, Joy Littlewood analyses Ovid's account of the origins of the festivals of June, demonstrating that Book 6 is effectively a commemoration of Roman War, and elegantly provides a framing bracket to balance the opening celebration of Peace in Book 1. She explores the subtle interweaving of pietas and virtus in Roman religion and its relationship to Augustan ideology, the depth and accuracy of Ovid's antiquarianism, and his audacious expansion of generic boundaries.

Ovid's Fasti comments on Augustan religion by means of ambivalent aetiologies, elegiac jokes and subtle allusions to the religious self-fashioning of the imperial family. Darja Sterbenc Erker carefully reconstructs Ovid's subtle unmasking of religious fundaments of Augustus' principate.

Virgil, Horace and Ovid are often cited as the three great canonical poets of classical Roman literature. And of the three, arguably it is Ovid (43 BCE-CE 17/18) who has the most enduring legacy. Carole Newlands introduces her subject as an ancient author with a vital place in the modern cultural canon: and also as the inspiration behind figures as diverse as Chaucer, Titian, Dryden and Ted Hughes. She views Ovid as a Latin writer who is uniquely suitable for times of change: he appeals to postmodern sensibilities because of his interest in psychology, his fascination with cultural hybridity and his challenge to the conventional divide between animal and human. This book explores the connection between the historical poet and the works he produced: love elegies, the Metamorphoses and the Fasti. It shows that unlike Virgil - who wrote early in Augustus' reign, anticipating a golden age of peace and prosperity - Ovid was a product of the late Augustan age: one of hardening autocracy and the greater influence of Tiberius behind the scenes. His elegies and erotic myths must therefore be understood as the result of complex, shifting political circumstances.

Considering the ubiquity of rhetorical training in antiquity, the volume starts from the premise that every first-person statement in ancient literature is in some way rhetorically modelled and aesthetically shaped. Focusing on different types of Greek and Latin literature, poetry and prose, from the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity, the contributions analyse the use and modelling of gender-specific elements in different types of first-person speech, be it that the speaker is (represented as) the author of a work, be it that they feature as characters in the work, narrating their own story or that of others. In doing so, they do not only offer new insights into the rhetorical strategies and literary techniques used to construct a gendered ‘I’ in ancient literature. They also address the form and function of first-person discourse in classical literature in general, touching on fields of research that have increasingly come into focus in recent years, such as authorship studies, studies concerning the ancient notion(s) of the literary persona, as well as a historical narratology that discusses concepts such as the narrator or the literary character in ancient literary theory and practice.

The idea of the past, far from suggesting a nostalgic longing or an antiquarian curiosity for ages and cultures irrevocably lost, is essential to the human perception of the world. The volume at hand, entitled In the Mists of Time: Negotiating the Past in Ancient Literature, explores pastness as expressed through myth and early history and as reflected in sophisticated concepts and epistemological questions in Ancient Greek and Latin literature. The eighteen contributions illustrate how the ancients addressed the past through poetry, history and philosophy and lend insight into the metaliterary, self-reflexive way of dealing with past texts through scholarship.

‘Where am I?’. Our physical orientation in place is one of the defining characteristics of our embodied existence. However, while there is no human life, culture, or action without a specific location functioning as its setting, people go much further than this bare fact in attributing meaning and value to their physical environment. 'Landscape’ denotes this symbolic conception and use of terrain. It is a creation of human culture. In Valuing Landscape we explore different ways in which physical environments impacted on the cultural imagination of Greco-Roman Antiquity. In seventeen chapters with different disciplinary perspectives, we demonstrate the values attached to mountains, the underworld, sacred landscapes, and battlefields, and the evaluations of locale connected with migration, exile, and travel.

This volume offers up-to-date translations of all 21 epistles of Ovid’s Heroides. Each letter is accompanied by a preface explaining the mythological background, and an essay offering critical remarks on the poem, and discussion of the heroine and her treatment elsewhere in Classical literature. Where relevant, reception in later literature, film, music and art, and feminist aspects of the myth are also covered. The book is augmented by an introduction covering Ovid's life and works, the Augustan background, originality of the Heroides, dating, authenticity, and reception. This is a vital new resource for anyone studying the poetry of Ovid, classical myth, or women in the ancient world. A useful glossary of characters mentioned in the Heroides concludes the book.

A new reading of the portrayal of Greek myths in Roman art, revealing important shifts in Roman values and identities.