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Full-Text Articles in Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity
Roman Bacchae: Dionysiac Mysteries, Masculinity, And The State In Livy’S Bacchanalian Narrative, Vassiliki Panoussi
Roman Bacchae: Dionysiac Mysteries, Masculinity, And The State In Livy’S Bacchanalian Narrative, Vassiliki Panoussi
Arts & Sciences Book Chapters
How does the treatment of women's rituals in Latin poetry and prose reveal Roman ideas of female agency?Powerful female characters pervade both Greek and Latin literature, even if their presence is largely dictated by the narratives of men. Feminist approaches to the study of women in Greek literature have helped illustrate the importance of their religious and ritual roles in public life—Latin literature, however, has not been subject to similar scrutiny. In Brides, Mourners, Bacchae, Vassiliki Panoussi takes up the challenge, exploring women's place in weddings, funerals, Bacchic rites, and women-only rituals. Panoussi probes the multifaceted ways women were able …
From Adultery To Incest: Messalina And Agrippina As Sexual Aggressors In Tacitus’ Annals, Vassiliki Panoussi
From Adultery To Incest: Messalina And Agrippina As Sexual Aggressors In Tacitus’ Annals, Vassiliki Panoussi
Arts & Sciences Book Chapters
This chapter continues the investigation of rhetorical maneuvers clustering around social and amorous hierarchies in the fraught sphere of sexual agency by studying the trope of the sexually aggressive older female preying on a younger man in Tacitus’ Annals. On the basis of a detailed examination of the portrayal of Messalina and Agrippina, it argues that it is precisely the recognizable rhetoricity and artificiality in the deployment of this trope, here dramatized through rich intertextual echoes and connections (notably Vergil’s Aeneid and Euripides’ Bacchae), which narratively undercuts any unambiguous condemnation of female superiority over male inferiority, disrupts any …