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This article investigates the lexicon of sexual difference in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, Papinius Statius’ Thebaid, and Silius Italicus’ Punica in order to explore the dynamics of gender in these long epics. The Flavian epic poets test the conventions and contradictions of normative Roman femininity (and masculinity) in scenes that rehearse different models of epic femininity: lamenting mother, sacrificial maiden, terrifying witch, faithful wife, and Amazonian warrior. Their narratives repeatedly measure the female sex against the standards of masculinity, and are acutely sensitive to contemporary contestations of the territorial assignments of gender in Flavian Rome.

This article analyzes the strategic representation of an elegiac mistress (puella), Gallus’ Lycoris, and her putative inspiration, the freedwoman and mime‑actress Volumnia Cytheris, across a number of Latin literary genres, both verse (elegy, bucolic, epigram) and prose (political invective, informal epistles, inscriptions). It argues that the investigation of ancient literary and material evidence together can illuminate our understanding of ancient attitudes to women, in this case to the figure of a Greek courtesan in late republican Rome, and enrich our knowledge of women’s lived experience in Roman antiquity.